


Leap of Faith

by Mithen



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, Identity Issues, M/M, Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-11
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 33,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Clark Kent arrives in Gotham after the events of The Dark Knight, he is determined to uncover the truth about the events of those dark days--and prove Batman's innocence. However, certain pieces of the puzzle remain baffling to him, like one playboy billionaire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [信仰之跃](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056614) by [Lynx219](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynx219/pseuds/Lynx219)



Clark Kent was sitting in the Gotham Public library, staring unseeingly at a history of the philanthropy in Gotham. The picture in the book in front of him was of a young couple opening a hospital, bright smiles on their faces. "Thomas and Martha Wayne open the Gotham Central Hospital," read the caption. The silence of the library was soothing to Clark's jangled nerves as his mind went over and over the greatest mystery of Gotham, a mystery with dark hair and cheerful, dissolute eyes.

A mystery of sadness beneath the cheer, a dark chasm of loss that Clark had only briefly glimpsed behind that dazzling smile.

His eyes traced the image again as if looking for clues: the smiling couple, the crowds. He frowned as he saw a face in the crowd, gazing at the Waynes with affection, even pride. A familiar face.

He glanced up at that moment to see the same face, worn with years, walking through the library.

Clark Kent was not a believer in signs or omens, but he was a reporter, and he knew an opportunity when he saw one. Quietly, he followed Alfred Pennyworth through the library.

Bruce Wayne's butler made his way deep to the heart of the library, where few people ever went. He climbed the spiral ladder that rose upward through the towering bookcases, his footfalls purposeful in the silence. Clark followed him without a sound, eventually stopping on the other side of a bookcase from Alfred. As he readied himself to confront the butler, the books in front of his face were suddenly jerked away to reveal a very annoyed face. "Mr. Kent," hissed Alfred, "Is Mr. Wayne going to have to put a restraining order on you?"

Clark startled, his stealthy offense turned to alarmed defense in an instant. "I'm just trying to bring the truth to light," he snarled back. "It's your boss who's pulled the plug on my story!" He moved around the bookcase to confront Alfred directly. "I have to talk to him." Ever since Perry White had regretfully told Clark that the Batman story had been canned, Clark had been trying to reach Bruce Wayne with no luck. "Mr. Wayne bought a controlling interest in the _Daily Planet_ just to shut down my story--don't deny it, I know it's true," he said to Alfred's outraged face. "Why would he do such a thing?"

"Mr. Wayne has his reasons," Alfred said stiffly, turning away from Clark to examine the bookcases once more. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm looking for a book."

Clark glanced at the spines of the books in front of him. "Why are you doing research on the Borel–Kolmogorov paradox and probability theory?"

Alfred looked annoyed for a moment, then was all business again. "Just because I am a butler doesn't mean I cannot have an interest in mathematics, Mr. Kent."

"No, no, of course not!" Clark waved his hands apologetically before remembering to frown. "But that's besides the point. I need to know why Mr. Wayne killed my story!"

Alfred pushed past him and moved to another bookcase, his posture and demeanor making it clear he and Clark Kent were no longer part of the same universe. Clark continued to follow, frustration driving him to grasp at Alfred's sleeve. Alfred looked coldly from the hand on his sleeve to Clark's face, his eyes narrowed. "Mr. Kent--"

"--Why won't you _listen_ to me?" Clark felt his voice almost shaking with urgency. All those leads followed, all those clues painstakingly assembled, all that work--for nothing, thanks to a spoiled, selfish billionaire with sad eyes Clark couldn't read. "Don't you care about the truth? _Batman didn't kill those people._" The hissed whisper echoed around the library oddly and Alfred winced. "Why is Wayne letting him be crucified for something he didn't do? It isn't fair, it isn't just, it's a travesty! And I thought--" His voice faltered suddenly and he paused, feeling emotions he didn't want to acknowledge trembling too close to the surface, "I thought Bruce--Mr. Wayne--I know I only met him a few times, but I felt like...he could understand that." A memory: Bruce Wayne's eyes as he looked at the Gotham skyline fading into dusk. "He's a good man, I can tell. Why won't he show it?"

Alfred's hand closed on his, but to Clark's surprise he didn't shake it off. Instead he gripped it tightly, and when Clark looked up at him he saw the older man's face was taut with some emotion that looked almost like anguish. "Mr. Kent," he said hoarsely, "I appreciate your desire for the truth. Please believe me. And I...appreciate your faith in Mr. Wayne's heart. More than I can say. But you are not able to understand him, not able to...to save him. He is--"

Clark felt it in the split-second before the shock wave hit: the air trembled and gasped as the oxygen was leached from it. Then the muffled _thud_ of an explosion some stories down; the building rocked and the air filled with the sound of tortured metal and concrete.

Then the screams started.

"Maroni," Alfred said in a voice that couldn't have been heard over the chaos by anyone else. "_Damn him._"

He had to get away. Clark turned to run downstairs, painting terror and panic on his face like a mask. But now Alfred caught at him, his hand like a vise on his wrist. "Not down," he barked, looking more like a drill sergeant than a butler. "We have to get to the roof." Clark gabbled something and tried to believably break the grip on his wrist. "This is no time to panic," Alfred yelled over the sound of rising flame. "The roof!"

Something in his eyes made Clark fear that if he "panicked" and ran into the flames, Alfred would follow him into danger. Clark swallowed. He'd get to the roof and get away.

They emerged onto the roof moments later, smoke already billowing around them, and ran to the edge. Alfred's face was streaked with soot and tears as he stared across the gap between the library roof and the roof of the nearest building. "Someone needs to talk to the city about more strictly enforcing fire escape code," he said, his voice strangely matter-of-fact.

"I'll write an expose of it after we get out of here," Clark said.

"Yes. About that--" There was a shudder and the roof beneath their feet sagged alarmingly. "I'm not so sure--"

Clark hooked his arm under Alfred's arms. "Hold on."

"What? No, there's no way, you can't--" Alfred stared at the drop, then back at Clark.

"Trust me, I'm a really good jumper," Clark urged. "I can make this." A sharp creak; smoke and sparks erupted somewhere just behind them.

Alfred was scanning the roof as if he were looking for some other means of escape, or as if he expected a random rescue to come swooping in out of nowhere. "It's impossible, no one could ever--"

"Trust me!" Clark yelled over the sound of crumbling brick. Alfred tried to duck under his arm and swayed on the edge of the precipice; chunks of mortar broke loose under his feet and disappeared below them. "I'm Superman!" Clark cried, desperate to get him to stop struggling.

As Alfred stared at him, he scooped him up in his arms and leaped lightly to the next building.

Alfred's face was very pale as Clark set him down safely. "You--" he started, his voice shaking, wild conjecture in his eyes.

Clark smiled dismissively and shrugged as if embarrassed. "Wow, that was lucky," he said. "Um...I'm not really Superman," he added sheepishly. "I just said that to get you to trust me." Alfred was shaking his head slowly. "There was a...updraft due to the heat, it lifted us up, couldn't you feel it?"

Alfred's eyes narrowed further. "Mr. Kent, I have...some intimate knowledge of the limits of the human body, and there is no way a human being could make that leap."

"Adrenaline--"

"--No. You were calm and confident of your ability. You _are--_" Alfred Pennyworth stepped forward and seized Clark's collar, tearing open his shirt to reveal the bright insignia. "My God," he said blankly.

There was a rumbling roar from the library. "I have to help," Clark said.

"Of course. Of course."

He was still staring after Superman as he went to battle the flames.

**: : :**

The library was in ruins, flames greedily consuming books. Superman made his way through the sparks and smoke, putting out flames where he could, bits of burning paper floating by. For a surreal instant a photograph of Bruce Wayne, torn from some society magazine, drifted in front of his eyes, the edges crumbling into flame and then the center eaten away, gone.

Under the roar of flame he heard a rustling silken sound and looked up to see dark wings silhouetted against the blaze, infernolight running along the black silk like water. Batman swooped soundlessly through the furnace, holding a tiny bundle under one arm. Superman stared, almost disbelieving his eyes--in weeks of research he had never seen the elusive vigilante--and as he did Batman's gaze locked briefly with his, a timeless instant that was over before Clark could register it, the dark shape vanishing toward the door like a shadow among the heat-haze.

Clark heard someone sobbing in the distance. No time to confront the Bat. Instead he plunged further into the fire, searching for the terrified heartbeats he could hear, leaping like flames about to be extinguished.

**: : :**

The last survivors were getting treatment, the flames dying down out of the gutted building, when Clark Kent--in a hastily replaced shirt--found Alfred Pennyworth again. The butler was helping the wounded that weren't in immediate danger, bandaging a young woman's burned arm with efficient tenderness. Clark waited patiently until he finished; when he looked up, Clark said, "When you're free, we--"

"--need to talk, I know," Alfred said, sounding weary. He stood, stretching his back. "I believe the paramedics have the worst under control." He smiled at Clark: a smile mixed equally of wonder and exasperation. "Shall we talk?"

**: : :**

"...and that's why I _have_ to find Batman, have to contact him somehow." They were walking in the park, along white-graveled paths. "He's the only other person out there who's--at all like me. And he can't defend himself publicly from the accusations against him, accusations that I _know_ are false, Mr. Pennyworth! I want to help him, somehow."

"And what if Batman doesn't want your help?" Alfred said with a bitter twist to his mouth.

Clark shook his head. "Then I just want to...talk to him. He deserves to have someone listen to his side of the story. And I can't do that with Mr. Wayne interfering." He glared at Alfred, but the other man seemed more tired than defensive.

"Mr. Kent," Alfred said. "I believe that if you were to be more honest with Mr. Wayne, if you were to reveal to him your secret--"

"--No." Clark shook his head emphatically. "Promise me you won't tell him about me." Alfred looked out over the gardens. "Promise me! Please, I've risked so much just letting you know. I _need_ you to promise."

Alfred sighed. "I...promise I won't tell him about your secret," he said reluctantly. "Promises and secrets," he added in a mutter as if tasting gall.

"Look, I like Bruce. He seems..." Clark faltered. "He seems...special." Alfred eyed him narrowly as he blundered on, "But I don't _understand_ him, and I can't trust someone that I can't understand."

"And I tell you, Mr. Kent, that you will never _understand_ him until you _trust_ him." Alfred's face was both concerned and stern. "You are going to have to make a leap of faith. Only then will the two of you--" He broke off and walked for a few steps, his gaze distant. "I believe you two could...be something for each other that no one else can," he said eventually.

Clark snorted, which made Alfred look at him reprovingly. "I don't think he needs a Kansas farm boy for a friend. Or an alien superhero, for that matter."

Alfred's feet grated on the gravel as he stopped suddenly, turning to glare at Clark. "Begging your pardon, sir, you know nothing at all about what Bruce Wayne _needs_. And until you can bring yourself to trust him, Mr. Kent, despite all your powers and abilities you will be lost in the darkness, unable to be what he needs."

_Bruce Wayne's eyes in the azure twilight, watching the city. At that moment Clark had stepped forward without thinking, as if to catch him. To catch a man who wasn't even falling._ "I...want to understand."

Alfred rested his hands on Clark's shoulders, briefly. "Then trust him, Mr. Kent. He needs someone to trust him. And someone he can trust." A brief, weary smile. "Such people are in short supply." He glanced at his watch. "Forgive me, but I must be home to serve Mr. Wayne supper soon."

Clark watched him walk away, his back straight and his stride as steady as if his clothes weren't covered in soot and blood. Only after he was out of sight did Clark realize that he hadn't given any answers about Clark's buried story.

The evening shadows fell across Gotham, indigo and sapphire, cloaking the bright buildings in dusk. Clark watched the city slowly glimmer into shadowed light and thought about trust and understanding and secrets, and about eyes that looked like a long fall into darkness, past all hope of rescue or recovery.


	2. Chapter 2

Clark Kent glared out at the sullen skyline as he stripped his soot-stained and smoke-filled clothes off and threw them on the narrow hotel bed. _Gotham._ The name was almost a curse in his mind.

He'd come here to write a story about the city rebuilding, six months after the Joker's final vicious rampage. He suspected he had been sent here by Perry White as punishment for taking five years off, supposedly to write a novel--which had never materialized, of course.

Gotham was penance enough for anyone.

He'd taken the opportunity to try and track down the elusive, murderous vigilante Batman, but at every turn he had been thwarted. Some argued Batman was a rogue Kryptonian, and despite seeing his broken and empty homeworld in person recently, Clark could almost believe it. Not a glimpse, not a whisper. Until tonight.

Clark turned the shower as hot as it could go and stepped in, lavishing great gouts of soap on himself in an attempt to clean the acrid stink from his skin. The water was a silken rush around him, and he remembered the whisper of Batman's dark cape as he'd sailed through the inferno the Mob had created of the Gotham Public Library. Carrying a tiny bundle to safety: Clark heard again the thin wail of a baby under the roar of the flames. There and gone like a shadow before Clark could do a thing.

Of course, the irony was that Clark no longer felt any need to confront Batman about his "crimes." The rest of the world was convinced that Batman was responsible for the kidnapping of Commissioner Gordon's family, the deaths of Sal Maroni, Harvey Dent, and two police officers, and numberless crimes of vengeance since that terrible night.

But Clark Kent, alone in the world, was both a well-trained investigative reporter and a Kryptonian.

He'd put enough evidence together to convince himself that Batman was innocent of the crimes with which he was charged. He'd been ready to write his scoop for the _Planet_, the story that would break the case wide open.

Clark plunged his head under the hot water, shaking it angrily. He'd been ready.

And then Bruce Wayne had happened.

**: : :**

Clark Kent and Superman had met Bruce Wayne within minutes of each other.

Superman was supposed to be at a charity party, presenting a check from the Metropolis Business Association to Gotham to help with the rebuilding of Gotham Memorial Hospital. He was running late, however, because Clark Kent wanted to watch the prominent citizens of Gotham in action without standing out like cockatoo in a flock of doves. Standing in a corner, he had held his untouched martini and kept on eye on everyone unaccosted.

Until, that was, Martin Mayne caught sight of him.

"Kent!" the editor of the _Gotham Gazette_ cried, dragging a man in an impeccable suit and perfect hair toward him. "You simply _must_ talk to Mr. Wayne. Clark Kent is writing a story about Gotham for the _Daily Planet_," he explained to the man on his arm, who seemed to be trying to extricate himself politely. At Mayne's words, though, he stopped and raised an eyebrow that implied faint interest. "Bruce Wayne, meet Clark Kent."

Clark's first impression of Bruce Wayne was that of exhaustion. There were dark circles under his eyes and an unhealthy look to his skin that told of long nights indulging in unwise behavior. Then Wayne smiled, and Clark could see why the man would be popular at parties or, well, anywhere. It was a startlingly sweet smile, almost shy, slightly ingratiating. _You and I, we're different from the others_, the smile seemed to say.

Clark was immediately even more on his guard. Almost nothing good ever came of people who smiled like that, in his experience. "It's a pleasure to meet you in person, Mr. Wayne. I've read a great deal about you."

"It isn't _all_ true, you know," said Wayne with a gleam.

"Then you know Brucie's family goes back hundreds of years in Gotham," Mayne said. "I'm sure if you have any questions about the city, he can help you." There was a sly edge to his smile as he sidled away; based on what Clark had read about Bruce Wayne he strongly suspected that Mayne was attempting to torment him by saddling him with a glib society bore.

Of course, it could also be that he was attempting to punish Wayne by roping him into a conversation with a dull-as-dirt farm boy turned reporter.

"You're writing a story about Gotham?" Wayne asked politely, his eyes scanning the room behind Clark for more interesting conversational possibilities.

"Yes, about the city's latest reconstruction efforts."

"I see, I see." Wayne looked like he was stifling a yawn. "I do hope it won't be another one of those tedious Metropolis stories about how Gotham welters in hopelessness and suffering. You could try a new, daring angle and focus on how the people of Gotham refuse to cower under the shadow of the big bad Bat. But that might be too much to ask for from our shiny sister city."

Clark felt his eyes narrow slightly in annoyance--the more so because the man had a point, and the _Planet_ was by no means immune to the lure of such stories. "Actually, I was focusing on the delays in rebuilding Gotham memorial." And then for some reason--maybe only to see if the man were actually listening--he added, "Besides which, I'm not sure Batman actually committed those murders."

Bruce Wayne's gaze sharpened suddenly, snapping to focus on Clark's face. "What?" For an instant, Clark felt like a butterfly on a collector's pin, analyzed and dissected. Then the gimlet look softened somewhat, and Wayne smiled, though not as pleasantly as before. "What an odd idea." There was strain behind those eyes, carefully covered. "Do tell me more."

Some intuition prompted Clark to back off, some sense of a crevasse opening up beneath them. "Oh, it's just a hunch. Probably nothing will come of it. I'm much more interested in the hospital rebuilding efforts."

Wayne's shoulders relaxed a fraction. "What would you like to know about it? The Wayne Foundation is heavily involved--though of course, I don't know any of the mundane details, I have people to handle those." His smile this time was back to its previous dazzling glory, empty as a winter sky. Clark asked him a few simple questions and Wayne chattered about funding and civic responsibility, rote phrases with no meaning. "I'd give the last drop of my heart's blood for my city" and so on. His superficiality was so complete that Clark could almost believe he'd imagined that one piercing look.

Clark listened to him rattle on about responsibility and devotion to one's home town for a while, telling stories about the good common folk of Gotham and their heroic stories, how they still can find hope in the midst of the pall of fear the Batman spread. "Just the other day I was talking with my grocer--" Clark didn't believe for a moment Bruce Wayne had ever stepped into an actual supermarket, "--and he was saying how the memory of Harvey Dent keeps him going in these dark times. You put that in your story, Mr. Metropolis," he said, leaning forward. "You write about heroism instead of fear, and I'll believe your paper is worth more than the stuff it's printed on."

A gaggle of young women sighed appreciatively from nearby. "Oh Brucie," one cooed, "You're so _sexy_ when you're civic-minded."

Grinning, Wayne seized her by a lily-white hand, presenting her to Clark. "Like this jewel of Gotham," he announced. "This heroic, brave young woman refuses to let fear rule her life. Right, my dear?" he said, kissing her hand.

Clark extricated himself from what was quickly becoming a flirtatious situation, wondering if Bruce Wayne used civic duty for all his pick-up lines. Wayne ignored his departure, which was well-timed as Superman was due to appear at the gathering in just a few minutes.

A quick costume change and Superman was back at the party, handing a huge rectangle of a check to Lucius Fox. "The people of Metropolis recognize the great achievements of their sister-city of Gotham," he intoned, then had to stifle a wincing laugh as he realized the platitudes were extremely similar to those he had just heard Bruce Wayne spouting. He saw Wayne in the audience, applauding politely, his eyes on Fox rather than Superman.

The rest of the evening was the usual grind of small talk and fending off flirtatious advances from various people. Apparently there was something deeply appealing about the possibility of "corrupting" a supposed stainless paragon like Superman.

It had been a long five years in space, and Superman wasn't a saint, but the avaricious glint in the eyes of the men and women at the party tended to dampen any potential ardor.

Superman expected that Bruce Wayne would surely be one of the people who decided to hang on the Man of Steel's every word, but instead Wayne was always on the opposite side of the room, somehow. It wasn't that he was _ignoring_ Superman, he was just...never quite there.

It was almost a relief when Superman heard an explosion in Metropolis and had an excuse to shake off the vapid conversation for a moment. After twenty minutes spent getting everyone in the building to safety and putting out the fire, he was flying back to Gotham, ready to return to a pleasantly boring evening.

As he descended from the clouds, he looked down toward Wayne Tower, looking for an unobtrusive veranda to land on. All of them seemed to have groups giggling or couples embracing--until he spotted one with a lone figure on it.

Superman was just about to drift downward when he realized it was Bruce Wayne.

Wayne was holding his champagne glass in one hand, the other one in his pocket. He was looking down at Gotham, the wind stirring his hair. Clark could see his face: the empty smile was gone, replaced by a kind of...grim satisfaction. A yearning.

As Superman watched, Bruce Wayne raised his glass and toasted the fitful lights of Gotham.

Clark felt suddenly like he was spying on something more intimate than the couples making out in the shadows. Chagrined, he descended quickly from the sky and landed lightly on the veranda in front of Wayne. Wayne took a step back, his eyebrows rising. "Superman," he said, his voice flatter than Clark had heard it before.

"Forgive the intrusion," Superman said, nodding in the friendly but abstracted way he had cultivated so carefully.

"You're not intruding." The cheerful smile was back again; Wayne took a sip from his glass. "Is everything okay?"

"A gas explosion in Metropolis. No lives were lost."

"Metropolis is lucky to have you back again. If only we had a hero like you in Gotham," Wayne said. His words were light, complimentary, careless--but he was looking out over the city once more, and Superman suddenly found himself taking a step forward, putting a hand out as if to prevent, to protect. He stopped, feeling foolish. Bruce Wayne was nowhere near the edge. He wasn't at any risk.

So why had Superman felt like he was in danger of falling?

The shower sputtered and ran cold for a second, and Clark realized he was still standing in the shower, his fists resting against the tile as if bracing himself against it. He grimaced angrily at himself, at his total failure in Gotham. He'd put together the pieces and figured out Batman was innocent--only to have Perry inform him that the new owner of the _Daily Planet_ had axed it.

When Clark had found out that new owner was Bruce Wayne, he had come back to Gotham in a seething mix of rage and bewilderment, only to find that the playboy billionaire was not returning any of his calls. And then, of all the careless moves--!

Clark would have pounded his fists against the tile except he was afraid of breaking through the wall. Tonight he'd cornered Wayne's butler to try and get some answers, but instead had ended up revealing he was Superman. The secret only his mother knew, the knowledge he had torn away from Lois--given away to _Bruce Wayne's butler._

Feeling vaguely guilty about the wasted water, Clark finally turned off the rushing shower and toweled off, going back over the night's events. Somehow he believed Alfred Pennyworth when he said he wouldn't tell his employer about Clark's secret, but he didn't know why. Clark had rarely met someone who inspired such quick trust. Pennyworth simply felt like a man with whom a secret was safe.

Clark found himself wondering what secrets Bruce Wayne trusted him with.

**: : :**

"I saw _him_ tonight. In the library."

Alfred Pennyworth paused in his mending of a black cape at the grated statement. It had sounded accusatory--but then, anything uttered in Batman's flat, grinding voice sounded like an accusation. Alfred had given up asking Bruce to speak in a normal voice when it was just the two of them; as long as the cowl was on the voice was Batman's. Alfred wasn't even sure Bruce was aware of it anymore.

He put two more stitches into the seam before replying. "The Kryptonian? I believe I saw him too."

"More importantly, _he_ saw _me_." The accusation was turned inward, Alfred realized. "All the infrared-cloaking technology, all the sonic scramblers to keep my heartbeat masked--and I just swoop right by him."

"Clark Kent cornered me at the library before the explosion," said Alfred with the air of someone changing the subject. Which he wasn't, exactly. "He was quite adamant about wanting to talk with you."

Batman lifted the cowl off to reveal Bruce Wayne's face, sooty and sweaty and heartbreakingly drawn. "Kent. My god, what a gadfly." He sat down heavily at the computer, calling up a picture of the reporter. "You know, I almost just gave up and returned his call tonight?"

Alfred startled and stabbed his own finger with the needle. "You did?" He blotted the drop of blood with a tissue, resisting the undignified impulse to stick it in his mouth.

"I don't know," Bruce said, staring at the earnest, bespectacled face on the screen. "I've been looking into his background. Reading his stories. He _cares_, Alfred. He's passionate about the truth--you heard the messages he left. He's furious at my 'travesty of justice.'" Bruce's voice echoed the tightly-leashed denunciation in Kent's message. "He's threatening to go to the police with the information--that won't get him anywhere. But he's also threatening to publish it on the Internet. I can't allow that. So it might make sense to talk with him, try to divert him. But it's more than that. Maybe I just want to spend some time around someone who believes that strongly about something. Maybe I just--"

He broke off, but Alfred could hear his words as clearly as if he had spoken them: _"Maybe I just want to be around someone who believes that strongly in my innocence."_

Bruce rubbed his eyes as if they were filled with ashes, sighed from a smoke-hoarse throat. "Idealists. I can't afford to be friends with another damn idealist." His voice was distant, as if he had forgotten Alfred was there. "They die too easily."

Alfred had given his word that evening to not reveal Clark Kent's secret, but if he thought it would have helped Batman--no, if he thought it would have helped _Bruce Wayne_\--he would have broken that word in an instant. And if he thought the man he had met in such dramatic fashion tonight had any intention of harming Bruce, Alfred would be stealing Kryptonite from the infamous Lex Luthor at this very moment. But if Bruce knew that the person he felt such an inexplicable pull toward was the Metropolis scion of truth and justice...Alfred knew that would be the end of it. He would retreat into the shadows, into the darkness of his own mind once more.

Alfred Pennyworth turned his eyes back to his sewing. He made ten neat, meticulous stitches in silence, counting each one before saying, "Mr. Kent seems committed to asking uncomfortable questions. Perhaps if you were to meet him again in person you could...channel his attention toward safer areas?"

There was a long silence, and Alfred wasn't sure he had been heard at all. But Bruce didn't close the image of Clark Kent on the monitor, and after a while he murmured, "I suppose it couldn't hurt."

His voice was leaden and lifeless, as it so often was recently, but somehow Alfred felt a lifting in his own heart, like the moment when Clark Kent had lifted and carried him to safety: wild and improbable, as hope always was.


	3. Chapter 3

A secretary opened the door and gave Clark Kent a winsome smile. "Mr. Wayne will see you now, sir." Clark glanced at his watch; Wayne had only kept him waiting forty minutes. That was practically polite for a billionaire.

As he walked through the door, it was clear what had kept the man; he was still rubbing at his eyes and yawning. "Sorry. Late night," Wayne said apologetically, holding out his hand. He looked, if possible, even more tired and dissolute than the last time Clark had met him.

"It's a pleasure to meet you again, Mr. Wayne," Clark said, shaking his hand.

"Oh please, call me Bruce," Wayne said easily. He sat down behind the long mahogany table and gestured Clark to a seat, steepling his hands and giving the reporter a long, hard look. "You say it's a pleasure, but you don't seem very pleased with me."

The bluntness startled Clark into an equally brusque retort: "I was just trying to be polite, Mr. Wayne--"

"Please. Bruce," murmured the man behind the desk, but Clark ignored him.

"--But if we're being honest here today, then no, I'm not very _pleased with you._" Wayne face was shuttered and blank, all his facile charm locked away and hidden, and Clark felt his anger growing. "You _purchased a newspaper_ to stop a story from coming out--a story which happens to be true! That's a pretty extravagant way to control information, don't you think? And not a very efficient one, in the age of the Internet."

Wayne was frowning. Without the quick and ingratiating smile, he looked downright haggard. "You say the story 'happens to be true.' You're so quick to know what truth is." The words were confrontational, but his voice was more musing than anything. He stood up, pushing back the extremely expensive ergonomic chair. "Let's talk about truths." Wayne turned to the window to look out over Gotham; his handsome face turned brooding, almost closed. "Let's talk about the Batman. Did you know, Mr. Kent, that I was going to ask Rachel Dawes to marry me?"

Clark blinked. "No."

"She was...my hope for a better life. A happy life. She was going to...save me." His face was drawn and haunted. "And then _he_ failed to save her. He let her die." He swiveled to glare at Clark. "Batman is responsible for her death as surely as if he caused the explosion himself."

Clark blinked. "I don't think that's very reasonable. He did everything--"

"_He_ should have been strong enough, smart enough, to save her," Wayne said, his mouth twisting. "And then, as if _that_ weren't enough of a betrayal of his city, he killed off Harvey Dent as well." Wayne touched the window again, looking out over the city. "She would save me and Harvey would save Gotham, that was the deal. But thanks to Batman, nothing's been saved at all." He closed his eyes, leaned forward and touched his forehead to the glass. "Write a story about that, Mr. Kent. About how Batman failed everyone who ever believed in him."

His voice was hoarse; he looked down at the city as though at a vast abyss, and Clark's righteous anger seemed to dissolve at the pain in his eyes. "But he didn't kill Dent," Clark pointed out gently. "Dent fell while threatening to kill Jim Gordon's family. It's all in my story."

Wayne didn't turn from looking at the city. "Your story isn't the truth." He closed his eyes. "Maybe it has some facts in it. But it doesn't have the truth. And the truth is that Batman is to blame for all of this. All the death, the chaos, the destruction--he could have prevented it all. I personally believe he deserves every bit of scorn and shame that is heaped upon him." His voice was flat, unrelenting.

"You're letting an innocent man be hunted for crimes he didn't commit."

Wayne chuckled bitterly. "Innocent," he muttered, as if sharing a cruel jest with the city below him.

"Harvey Dent was a madman," Clark said, less gently, trying to break through that veneer of blank and unreasoning hatred. "He killed--"

Wayne's fist slammed into the glass. "--Harvey Dent was a _good man_ and a hero, and I will not hear you slandering his name. He brought a hope to Gotham that hadn't been here in years. He brought in most of Gotham's mafia in one day. _One day._" His sunken eyes bored into Clark's as if willing him to see Dent through his vision. "He was more effective at cleaning up Gotham than that masked freak ever was, or ever will be," he said, the brief spark dying into bitterness once more. "Batman inspired nutcases with Uzis to 'follow his example'; Harvey inspired real people, normal citizens, to be their best."

"Normal citizens like you?"

Wayne looked surprised for a second. "Yes. I suppose Harvey did inspire me." He looked at Clark thoughtfully. "Your colleague, Lois Lane, just wrote an article about why Metropolis needs Superman after all. Maybe every city needs a white knight, a symbol of incorruptibility to rally around. Harvey was our Superman, the best we had."

"Dent wasn't that perfect, and Superman isn't either.".

"Oh come now, Mr. Kent. Superman is more than human, after all: above our petty desires and sordid needs."

Against his will, Clark remembered his desperate need for Lois, his willingness to throw away his heritage, his responsibility, to have her. His shamed flight in the aftermath of his failure. "No one is that untouchable, Mr. Wayne."

"Well," Wayne said, his face bleak in the indirect winter's light streaming through the windows, "People need to believe someone is. They need someone who stands in the light, someone who they can trust to never fall, never fail them." He shook his head. "Batman will never be that." Vitriol laced his voice. "This city deserves her white knight."

"Deserves it enough to lie to them about it?"

Bruce Wayne's eyes blazed, the same sharp look Clark remembered from the party. "I'll do anything it takes to give the people of Gotham hope, do you hear me? _Anything._"

Clark heard once more his voice at the party: _"I'd give my heart's blood."_

"You mean all that," he said without thinking. "You really love Gotham that much."

Bruce blinked, and the bright, feverish fervor seemed to slip from him, leaving him tired and weary once more. "It's Gotham," he said quietly, simply, as if that explained everything. "But you probably wouldn't understand." There was no accusation in his voice, only resignation.

"I want to," said Clark, and found to his surprise he meant it. He wanted to know what sparked such passion in a man like Bruce Wayne, wanted to know what created that kind of loyalty. "Show me."

Bruce was looking at him, long and steady. "A bargain, then. You put off posting that expose on the blog, or the Internet, or wherever those things get put, and I'll show you Gotham. Give me a month, and I'll give you the most in-depth story about Gotham ever." He flashed a blinding smile. "As a bonus, you even get to keep your job."

Clark gritted his teeth and reminded himself that the full story wasn't even finished yet. Gotham was an increasingly baffling puzzle, and if he could get some extra information out of this infuriating man... "And if at the end of the month I decide the truth about Batman still must be told?"

"Then you get to pit your wits against Wayne Enterprises' best hackers. But let's not worry about that until the end of the month," he said cheerfully. "Do we have a deal?"

Surely, given a month, Clark could convince Wayne that the story needed to be published. "Okay, it's a deal."

Bruce clapped him on the back, ushering him toward the door. "Meet me back here at nine tomorrow. I promise I won't be late next time," he added with a rakish wink.

Behind the playfulness, Clark could see exhaustion and something close to desperation. This was important to Wayne, important in a visceral way. There was a story there, Clark's instincts told him. Something vital, something about the shadowy heart of Gotham.

A story Clark wanted to tell.

**: : :**

Back in his hotel room, Clark started his computer and opened the video file marked "Gordon Press Conference Post Joker," dated six months ago.

On the screen, the new police commissioner, Jim Gordon, was standing in front of a forest of microphones, looking pale, grim, and shaken. "I want to reiterate at this time," he said, "That we have no evidence linking the Batman to these murders. None at all," he added forcefully.

"With all due respect, sir," said a reporter, and Gordon flinched a little, as if preparing himself, "Doesn't the Gotham City police department have something of a...vested interest in clearing Batman's name? Since you've been working with him so closely for the last year?"

Gordon's jaw tightened. "There's no evidence that we've been working with the Batman," he said stolidly, ignoring the ripple of incredulous laughter that went around the room. "You keep insisting the Batman is linked to these murders, but I am _telling_ you--" His voice was haggard, "--We have no evidence at all that he killed either Maroni or those two officers."

An immediate uproar broke out at his last words. "Batman is responsible for murdering police officers? Why haven't you mentioned this before?" Gordon held up his hand in an imploring gesture, but the reporters continued to shout questions. "It's out there! You can't unsay it now, Gordon!"

A woman with smooth blond curls raised her hand; her calm voice sliced through the babble. "The GCPD released the names of five officers killed in action yesterday. Which ones precisely are you talking about?"

Gordon's hands were shaking. "Now listen. I cannot stress this strongly enough. We have _no_ evidence linking Batman with the death of Detective Henry Wuertz or the disappearance of Detective Anna Ramirez."

A reporter snapped out, "Wuertz and Ramirez? Wasn't Dent's Internal Affairs Division investigating both those officers for alleged mob ties? Were they crooked? Is that why the Batman killed them?"

"We have no evidence the Batman was involved in any of this," Gordon repeated doggedly. "But...yes, they were both under investigation." For a moment, his face was very bleak. "If they were indeed corrupt, the blame for this lies with me. I hired them. I trusted them."

"And _that's_ why the Batman kidnapped your family, isn't it?" another reporter crowed. "Oh, don't try to cover this up, Gordon. We've talked to your men and they admit when they arrived on the scene you told them to find and apprehend Batman. He kidnapped your family to punish you for hiring those corrupt cops, and Harvey Dent tried to save them and fell to his death, didn't he? Stop trying to protect your precious vigilante!"

Gordon bowed his head for a long moment; when he looked up again the room fell silent at whatever they saw in his eyes. "What happened with my family is...very private and not at issue here. Harvey Dent was...a hero. And his fall--" His voice shook and he stopped and collected himself, tried again, "--His fall cannot be blamed on Batman."

But Clark could hear it in the crowd's murmurs, see it in their avid smiles. In his attempt to shield the Batman from accusation, Gordon had managed to make the vigilante look guiltier than ever.

It had been, Clark reflected, a singularly inept performance on the new commissioner's part.

He closed the file and stared at the empty desktop for a while, with its photo of a rippling corn field. Commissioner Gordon was resolutely not returning Clark Kent's calls. It was a total stonewall. Another chunk of the story locked up in a man's mind, a man who wasn't speaking to nosy reporters.

Fortunately, Clark reflected wryly, he had a few tools at his disposal that your average nosy reporter didn't have.

**: : :**

Somewhere in the distance sirens wailed in the night. Jim Gordon grimaced to himself and signed another piece of paperwork. Another Gotham night. Another night where he had to wonder if the hounds he'd helped sic on Gotham's protector would bring him to bay at last. Every night he waited for the call to come in, the call telling him they'd finally brought down the Batman. He'd go to the scene and pull the cowl from sightless eyes to see at last the secret face of the man he'd condemned to death. The face of his friend.

He'd take his thirty pieces of silver and go back to work protecting the city, just like the Dark Knight would want him to.

He smiled to himself very slightly when he heard it: the sound of a cape stirring slightly, a silken whisper. The Batman hadn't appeared at his office window for two months now--security was high and they risked everything by meeting in person. His communications with Jim were usually by computer, terse and coded, untraceable. And yet...now and then there would be a voice at his window, or a shadow out of place in an alley near an investigation, a moment where they could stand together, each tangible and actual to the other. As if the vigilante needed the reassurance of the Commissioner's reality as well. Two men with a heavy secret, almost close enough to touch, if Jim were so presumptuous as to do so.

The liquid hiss of cloth came again and Jim swung around suddenly to confront it. "You're getting careless--" he began triumphantly, then broke off in shock and horror as his eyes lit on red and blue, on unearthly azure eyes hovering outside his office.

"Were you...expecting someone?" Superman asked politely.

Jim's heart was pounding; the alien's eyes were sharp as cobalt daggers, looking at his soul. "Training exercises," Jim said. "Infiltration maneuvers for our SWAT team. They try to use that as an excuse to sneak up on the boss sometimes." He cocked an eyebrow at the Kryptonian. "Would you care to come in?"

Superman lowered himself into the open window. "I wanted to talk to you about the Batman," he said. The alien face was expressionless, perfect, flawlessly just. Nothing in the angles of that face would ever be interested in the murky web of lies and half-truths that Jim had spun to cover Gotham, to veil it in protective darkness.

For a moment Jim imagined this angel of righteousness descending from the sky upon the Batman, a thunderbolt of brightness crashing upon that dark human frame. His heart twisted, and he took that pain and used it to harden his voice, turn it caustic. He'd gotten good at that. "Unless you've got that costumed freak trussed up and waiting outside my window, you're not of much use to me." He looked away from the vivid primary colors, took a long sip of his coffee. "Um, no offense."

Superman looked at him for a long, silent moment. Jim waited for him to abuse Batman, to chastise Gordon for the corruption and ineptitude of his police force--this time true anger clenched Jim's jaw and tightened his grip on the coffee mug. If Superman thought he could walk--well, float--in here and insult people who put their life on the line in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, then he--

"Batman didn't murder anyone."

Jim's fingers went numb; he stared at Superman, aghast. The truth seemed to echo in the cramped and cluttered office.

Superman stepped forward and caught the mug from Jim's hand as it slipped.

"I--I never claimed he did," Jim managed after a moment as Superman placed the mug gently on the desk.

"He's accused of kidnapping your family. You were there."

"There was a struggle between Batman and Dent. I was focused on getting my family to safety. When it was over, Dent was dead and Batman was gone. Maybe it was an accident."

"The entire police force is not hunting him down over an _accident_."

"For questioning, as a person of interest."

"_Questioning?_" Superman's eyes narrowed. "The man is assumed to be a cop-killer. You know perfectly well the police will shoot to kill."

Jim looked into his mug, at the rusty stains against the china. "There have been a string of murders since that night. Police, criminals. These aren't necessarily isolated incidents."

Superman shook his head. "He gets blamed every time a thug trips and falls to his death from a rooftop, every time a police officer gets stabbed by a mobster and left to die. But he isn't responsible for them."

"I never claimed he was--"

Superman put his hands down on the desk hard enough to make coffee slosh over the mug's rim. "You're telling the truth, but you're _lying,_" he said. There was anger tightly leashed in his voice, and he looked suddenly less like an avenging angel than a tired and frustrated man. "For all your carefully-phrased denials, you're letting someone be hunted down for crimes he did not commit." His shoulders sagged and his expression shifted to imploring. "You don't seem like a liar to me," he said. "So why are you lying?"

"I'm a terrible liar," rasped Jim. That at least was certainly true. "So believe me when I tell you that Batman is a wanted fugitive and the Gotham police department will not rest until he is caught." Also true. He forced vehemence into his voice. "Whatever you or I may think, he will pay for the choices he made that night."

God help them all, that was true already.

Superman straightened. The frustration and the shadow of pity was gone from his brilliant blue eyes once more, leaving only merciless truth and justice. "I just hope you can live with what you've done, Commissioner Gordon," he said, and he was gone.

Gordon sat for a moment in the silence, afterimages of piercing blue eyes against his retinas. "I have to," he said to the empty room.

Then he put his face in his hands and listened to the sirens howling in the night, hounds after Gotham's black fox.


	4. Chapter 4

"Good morning, Mr. Wayne!" The young woman behind the counter called over the jingle of the bells attached to the door. "The usual?"

"Sure thing. Thanks, Annie. What would you like, Clark? Can I call you Clark? I really wish you'd call me Bruce instead of 'Mr. Wayne.' That makes me sound so _old_. 'Mr. Wayne' is never making the cover of _GQ_, and I'm hoping to again this year," Wayne said. Annie hid a smile behind her hand as she poured a mug of black coffee and put a muffin topped with oats on a tray.

Clark ordered a coffee and a raspberry danish. The little deli was hardly the kind of place he'd expected someone like Bruce Wayne would come often, with its peeling linoleum floors and scratched formica tables.

Bruce noticed his look and seemed to read the thought behind it. "I stop in for coffee sometimes. They make it just the way I like it," he said, taking off his black cashmere coat and dropping it on the back of the rickety chair. He sat down and picked up the mug. "Strong enough to stand a spoon in." He took an appreciative slurp. "Good stuff."

"I would have pegged you for a cappucchino man."

Bruce's eyes glinted laughter. "I prefer cafe latte, but cappucchino's good too." He cupped his hands around the mug, and Clark noticed that there was a dark, ugly bruise across the back of one hand, sickly greenish-yellow at the edges. Bruce drew back, and Clark realized he had extended a hand without thinking, reaching out as if to touch the injury. "It's nothing," Bruce said, and put the hand under the table, holding the mug with his other hand.

"What happened?" Clark felt vaguely uncomfortable; the darkness of the blood under the skin had seemed deeply _wrong_ somehow.

"It's nothing," Wayne repeated, his voice flat. Then he seemed to relent. "I...slipped in the shower. Banged it pretty badly."

"That's nothing to be ashamed of," Clark said.

A tilted smile that seemed to be turned inward. "Maybe I was ashamed to admit I was showering alone," Bruce said.

"Well, you didn't _have_ to admit it," Clark rejoined, smiling despite himself. "You could have said you had blond triplets in there with you."

"I admit it, I didn't." Wayne confessed, adding quickly, "I _thought_ they were triplets, but as it turned out they were twins with their younger sister. I swear, though," he said, looking at Clark imploringly, "I _swear_ I thought they were, and they were _practically_ triplets!"

"Well, I appreciate your refreshing candor, Mr. Wayne, even at the cost of your personal reputation."

Bruce looked rather alarmed. "You won't put that I was showering alone--or that I mistook those girls for triplets--in your paper, will you? I'd be _ruined,_" he said dramatically, and Clark found himself laughing with him. Bruce tore into the muffin as if he hadn't eaten for days, eating with a surprisingly meticulous haste.

Clark took a bite of his danish and murmured in appreciation. "Good, isn't it?" Bruce said. "The owner makes them fresh every day. This is one of the oldest diners in Gotham, it's been here since 1940. Akiva, the current owner, took it over fifteen years ago. It got badly damaged when the monorail was destroyed--" He gestured with his chin out the window, where the shadow of the monorail tracks fell across the sidewalk, "--but they rebuilt."

"As if we'd let some nutcase run us out of Gotham," put in Annie, as she started refreshing their coffee mugs. "We don't even let the Batman scare us 'round here."

"You hear that?" Bruce beamed at Clark. "Not even the Batman."

"We'd just tell him to clear his freaky leather ass out of here," Annie grinned. "More coffee, Mr. Wayne?" Bruce nodded and she topped off his mug. "Or Akiva'd get out his shotgun, show the bastard a thing or two."

Bruce watched the waitress head off to talk to some other customers. "She's amazing, isn't she?" He'd finished his muffin quickly and sat waiting for Clark to finish his danish. There were dark circles under his eyes, but one leg was juttering under the table as though he had an excess of restless energy. "Ready?" he said as Clark took his last bite. "Today I just want to show you the downtown and one other place." He winked. "Wouldn't want to overwhelm you with the awesome."

Their walk took them in a loop through the downtown and along the edge of Robinson Park. Wayne Towers never was far out of sight, looming into the sky; the building seemed to be at the center of Gotham and all the sight lines led inexorably to it: wherever you went it was there, looking down on you, looming. Bruce strode beside him, pointing out various things: architectural details, interesting posters, unusual items for sale.

"You seem to know a lot about Gotham," Clark noted after Bruce finished telling him the history of an ornate black marble fountain.

"I grew up here," Bruce said easily. "Gotham was important to my parents."

"Is that why you supported Harvey Dent?" Bruce turned from admiring a display of Italian shoes to give Clark a rather surprised look. "Because he seemed committed to the same things your parents were?"

"I..." Bruce turned back to the plate glass window. He seemed to be studying his own reflection in it, dim and ghostly. Or maybe he was just deciding which pair of shoes he liked best. "My parents taught me that we--people with power, with influence--were the servants of the city. The stewards. The guardians of its greatest treasures and protectors of its most helpless. I haven't always served Gotham as well as I should have. I have not been a...a good servant." He turned from the glass and continued to stride down the street, leaving Clark hurrying to catch up. "Harvey was a champion, a righteous defender, a crusader. Perhaps I saw in him everything I knew my parents wanted me to be."

Clark had to put on a burst of speed to keep up with him; the other man was walking briskly, apparently unaware of his own pace. "A champion isn't quite the same as a good servant," he noted.

Bruce stopped so suddenly Clark almost ran into him. "What?"

His eyes were sharp, and Clark struggled to clarify his casual statement. "A champion gets glory, public acclaim. Maybe he doesn't seek fame, maybe that's not his motivation, but he gets it. A servant...goes unnoticed. Unremarked-on. People take servants for granted. They don't realize how much they owe them." Bruce was still looking at him. "A city might benefit from a champion, yes. But your parents were right, it needs servants more."

Bruce smiled abruptly, as if shaking off a bad mood, and waved a hand. "I'll make sure to tell my butler you said so. He'll appreciate it."

Clark shook his head as they started moving again, unwilling to let the topic drop. "Take Metropolis. Metropolis has a champion. But the real greatness of a city is in its servants--people willing to do the work without the glory. Unnoticed, even reviled, like--" He broke off and grimaced slightly to himself. He was talking too much when he should be the one listening. But even though the playboy was continuing to walk with long, sidewalk-eating strides, his entire posture seemed bent on listening to Clark.

The man was a good listener.

"Like?" Bruce stopped and prompted him slightly after a silence. They were outside the Gotham Superior Courthouse now. A new statue of Harvey Dent stood there, one hand outstretched as if in benison of the people entering and exiting the court. Clark could make out the brass plaque affixed to its base: _Donated by the Wayne Foundation_.

Clark shrugged, uncomfortable. _Like Batman_, he'd been about to say without thinking, but he didn't want to get Bruce started on another rant against the vigilante. "Like Jim Gordon," he said instead, although he wasn't sure he meant it at all.

The Commissioner knew Batman was innocent, Clark was sure of it after his visit. He knew Batman was innocent, and he was still willing to scapegoat him, to let his officers hunt him down. What kind of public servant would do that?

And yet--Clark remembered Gordon's hands fiddling with a paper clip, twisting it nervously even as he spoke harshly. He hadn't seemed a malicious man, framing Batman for his own gain. Like Wayne, Gordon seemed to think that letting Batman take the blame for Harvey Dent's actions was only fair and right.

Bruce Wayne's vendetta against Batman was personal, born of grief and rage--and darker things that Clark could sense lurking half-seen under the surface. But what did Jim Gordon have against the Dark Knight?

"Gordon's a good man," Bruce said. "He does his best to keep this city safe even after the mess the Batman's made of it." The warmth in his voice dropped away to be replaced by the cold loathing that always laced his words about Batman. "He and the people of Gotham," he added. "Look at them."

He gestured outward and Clark followed his gaze: pierced and tattooed teens skateboarding, lawyers in suits talking on their cell phones as they hurried in to court, an elderly couple feeding bread to an inquisitive squirrel.

"They don't live in Metropolis, where they can feel safe," Bruce said. "They live in _Gotham._ And sometimes--more often than you'd think--they make it a better place." As they watched, one of the skateboarding teens stopped a complicated maneuver to pick up a piece of trash and slam-dunk it in a nearby waste basket; Bruce chuckled. "I love them," he said, his voice low and intense. Then he looked slightly surprised and laughed a bit, self-deprecatingly. "I mean...I spent a lot of time away from Gotham, but when I came back I realized how much I loved this city. These people. They deserve the best." He looked squarely at Clark. "They deserve to not have their faith in Dent crushed. I know you'll agree with me if you just _listen._"

"And I know you'll agree with _me_ that it's wrong to let Batman be a scapegoat if you would just _listen_."

They glared at each other for a long moment, frustration crackling the air between them. Bruce Wayne looked away first, sighing. "Okay, next stop," he muttered. He reached into his coat pocket and took out a wafer-thin cell phone. "Alfred? We're at the courthouse. Yes, thanks."

A few moments later a sleek black car pulled up to the curb. Bruce bounded over to it, beckoning to Clark to join him in the back seat.

The interior was all leather and chrome, elegant and refined. "Alfred, this is Clark Kent," said Bruce.

The man in the front seat inclined his head briefly as the car moved back into traffic. "Mr. Kent and I have met," Alfred Pennyworth said.

"That's right," Bruce exclaimed. "You mentioned--the night of that horrible library bombing."

"I thought you were Mr. Wayne's butler," said Clark. "You're his chauffeur too?"

Bruce laughed. "I told you he was a good servant. Plus he cooks, keeps track of my correspondence and social calendar, and does my shopping."

"I also do windows," Alfred said, looking into the rearview mirror with his eyebrows raised. His eyes met Clark's. "It's a pleasure to see you again, sir."

Clark replied with something polite, feeling extremely uncomfortable. Alfred Pennyworth was the only person alive besides his mother who knew his secret, and it was uniquely disconcerting to be interacting in public with someone who knew about his double life. But Alfred's face was as perfectly neutral and uninterested as if he drove secret costumed crime-fighters around town every day.

"So where are we going?" asked Clark.

"Next stop: Gotham Memorial Hospital," said Bruce with relish. "I was dating a hot heart surgeon there for a while, maybe I'll get lucky and run into him again." He leaned his head back and Clark couldn't help but notice that the black leather only made him look more pale and weary. The man was a total cypher: one minute spouting civic-minded platitudes as if he meant every word, the next minute focused on fashion and sex as if all he did was go to parties. It was clear Harvey Dent had inspired him--but obviously not enough to give up his late-night carousing.

"Here we are," Alfred announced as they pulled up to the hospital, much of it still skeletal beams and girders.

"Thanks, Alfred," said Bruce. "Let me show you more of the best of Gotham," he said to Clark, opening the door.

"You think everything is the best of Gotham," Clark complained, and Bruce threw back his head in a surprised laugh.

"I guess I do at that," he said.

The hospital had only a few working buildings at the moment, filled with doctors and nurses hurrying to and fro. "We have some of the finest doctors in the world," Bruce said. "They come here because they're needed here, and they want to help." He waved to a white-haired woman with a clipboard. "Dr. Greschitz moved here ten years ago to help work with spinal cord injuries." The woman nodded and smiled at him, but didn't stop hurrying down the hall. "Dr. Belcove is one of the world's leading specialists on post-traumatic stress disorder," he said, gesturing to a man with sharp hazel eyes and a goatee.

"Hi there, Bruce," said Dr. Belcove. "Nice to see you again."

His smile was quite close to flirtatious, and as they continued down the hall it became clear he wasn't the only one. Most of the nurses and doctors seemed to know Bruce, and to be glad to see him: smiles, waves, and fluttered eyelashes followed them down the corridor.

"You're pretty popular here," said Clark.

Bruce seemed surprised by this statement. His steps slowed. "Well, the Wayne Foundation has funded a lot of the equipment."

"It's more than that. They like you."

"That's silly," said Bruce, stopping to ask a group of orderlies what they thought about the big game last night, although it was fairly clear to Clark he wasn't sure which sport they were talking about. "Oh," he said as they continued down the corridor, "And how's my favorite doctor today?" He stepped in the path of a blond woman, pretty in a severe sort of way, who was staring at a clipboard. She stopped and cast him an annoyed look over the tops of her horn-rimmed glasses.

"Mr. Wayne, don't you have someplace better to be than distracting the staff?"

Bruce seemed undeterred by her frosty tone. "My offer still stands--just one date? Come on, I could show you a really fun time."

She rolled her eyes and moved past him, ignoring his wink. Bruce watched her go with a sigh. "Dr. Quinzel doesn't find me amusing," he confided loudly to Clark, provoking a final aggravated sniff from her. Continuing to move down the hall, Bruce said, "She's one of our best psychologists. Splits her time between here and Arkham. Brilliant, brilliant mind." A quick flash of a smile. "You can tell because she refuses to have anything to do with me."

He showed Clark a few more areas of the hospital, checking to make sure Clark was taking good notes, getting everyones' names right. Then he steered Clark past a sign marked _No Entry: Construction._

"This way to our pride and joy," Wayne said, leading Clark down an empty hallway lined with plastic tarps, smelling of paint and lumber. At the end of the hall was a plaque: _The Harvey Dent Memorial Burn Unit._ Bruce rubbed a thumb over the gleaming metal. "It's scheduled to open next month. People will be _healed_ here, their lives made better by hard-working Gothamites. Isn't that a better story than the one you want to write? This is a truth that doesn't harm anyone. Isn't that worth fighting for?"

In the dim light of the unfinished wing, his eyes looked almost pleading. Clark looked away from them.

"I know you want what's best for Gotham, Mr. Wayne. But you don't always get to choose for everyone."

Wayne's smile was tight, almost ghastly for a moment. Then he relaxed with a visible effort, his smile returning to its easy charm.

"_What_ am I going to have to do to get you to call me Bruce?" he said.

**: : :**

Wayne had seemed to enjoy meeting and greeting everyone up and down the halls, and yet when they got back to the limousine he sank into the back seat with a sigh that seemed ripped from his chest. "Let's take Clark back to his hotel, Alfred," he said with a wave, leaning his head back against the seat.

As they drove, Bruce pointed out a few more sights, but there were long gaps in his chatter about the city, and when Clark glanced over at him he saw that his eyes were half-closed and he was struggling to stay awake. A few more minutes, and he was fast asleep, his mouth slightly open and his breaths deep and regular. Even in sleep he looked exhausted, his skin tinged with gray and his brows pinched. One hand had fallen onto the seat between them, and Clark could see again the livid bruise creeping across it. The hand twitched spasmodically, as if clutching at something in his dreams, then subsided.

The gate for Robinson Park flashed by in the window, and Clark abruptly realized two things. The first was that he'd been watching Bruce's sleeping face for a while now.

The second was that they weren't heading toward the hotel.

A quick glance around confirmed it: they were going in circles, winding around the streets of Gotham in loops, never quite reaching Clark's hotel.

In the driver's seat, Alfred glanced at the rear-view mirror and his eyes met Clark's for moment. Clark nodded slightly at the entreaty in his eyes, sensing deep currents, unsure what they were. Alfred looked away and continued his winding route.

Clark sat in the back seat and said nothing as Alfred Pennyworth drove them through the streets of Gotham for an hour, giving Bruce time to sleep. He looked past the sleeping form beside him, watching the skyscrapers and pawn shops and bars slide by, their harsh lights touching Bruce Wayne's dreaming face.


	5. Chapter 5

I can't _believe_ you let me fall asleep in front of him!" Bruce snarled as he pulled on his boots, stomping his feet on the floor as if the heavy leather grounded him somehow. "I hate looking so--I look like an _idiot_ when I sleep!"

_I hate looking so vulnerable_, Alfred mentally translated for him. "If you'd get enough sleep at night I wouldn't have to resort to such tricks."

"That is _my_ choice, not yours." Bruce jabbed an angry finger at Alfred. "_Mine._" He took a deep, shaking breath.

"I was unaware I had the power to force you to sleep," said Alfred. "Perhaps I should use it more often."

"I'm sorry," Bruce muttered, looking away. "I know I've been on edge lately." He yanked his gauntlets on. "It's all the damn--" He pinched the bridge of his nose with gloved fingers. "--The damn Mob, and the gang warfare has been heating up, and it seems whenever I manage to get things under control in the East End, all hell breaks loose in the Bowery, and I--" He broke off, shaking his head, and picked up the cowl. "He gets to me," he said, his voice low.

"Mr. Kent?"

"Mr. Kent," Bruce echoed. "Clark. I don't know what it is and it's annoying as hell. I want him to see Gotham like I do, and I get going about it, and...the next thing I know I sound like I _care_. He's...dangerous. He gets under my skin," he said, slapping an armored arm as though the suit were his skin indeed. "I shouldn't let him."

"He seems a good man to me," Alfred said carefully.

"_Exactly_," Bruce said as though Alfred had proven his point. He was still staring at the cowl in his hands. "I need some distance. If he calls here, tell him I'm busy."

Alfred struggled to keep the alarm from his voice. "Surely you're not going to cut him off entirely, sir? I mean, the risk that he'll publish that story if you don't keep him close--"

Bruce pulled the cowl over his head; when he spoke again it was the Batman's voice. "There are bigger risks."

**: : :**

The sounds of the _Planet_ bullpen buzzed around him as Clark closed his cell phone. He'd called Bruce Wayne's number three times in the last two days, and each time, Alfred Pennyworth had politely informed him that Mr. Wayne's schedule was booked for the day, would Mr. Kent please try again later?

Clark wondered if he was imagining the slightly imploring tone to Alfred's voice, the faint emphasis on the _please_.

"--Clark!" Lois's voice finally broke into his thoughts.

"Uh. Yes?"

"You've been staring off into space for ten minutes now, _what_ is going on?" Lois snatched the business card he'd been twirling from his fingers and glanced at it. A line appeared between her eyebrows. "Bruce Wayne? He gave you this? Were you just calling him?"

Clark felt oddly cornered, uncertain, especially when Cat Grant looked up from her desk at the two of them with interest in her eyes. "I'm doing a story on Gotham. Bruce Wayne is a valuable contact. Is there something wrong with calling him?"

"I just wouldn't want you to get...overly invested."

"I'm not 'overly invested,' I've just met him a couple of times to--"

"--You've _met_ him?" Cat Grant was slinking over to his desk now. "What's he like? Is he as..._wild_ as they say?" Cat rolled the word on her tongue with relish.

"I--" For once, Clark's stammer was entirely unfeigned. "I--I wouldn't say that, he seems like a very responsible--"

Cat threw back her head and laughed. "Bruce Wayne? Responsible? Do you call being into ice climbing _responsible?_ That's climbing up frozen waterfalls, you know--he did that for a lark in Banff last winter. You call wrecking three different sports cars in two years _responsible_? And that's not saying anything about the extremely private and...shall we say..._specialized_ clubs he's been known to haunt--"

"--Cat." Lois's voice had an edge to it. "We're not in the titillating rumor business here. There's no proof of that."

"Oh, but titillating rumors are so _fun_," pouted Cat. She shrugged, grinning at Clark. "But hey, it's none of _my_ business if some kinky guy with a death wish is hitting on you--"

"--He's not hitting on me!" Clark yelped, and Cat smirked knowingly, gave him a wink, and went back to her desk.

Lois took a sip of her coffee, watching him,

"He's not hitting on me," he repeated more softly to her. "That's ridiculous."

Lois smiled, but her eyes were concerned. "Cat's just jerking your chain. But Clark--do be careful." She rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment. "Bruce Wayne's done a lot for Gotham. I'm sure he's a...well-meaning man. But you have to admit that interpersonally he's a walking disaster. I'm not sure he'd be a ...safe man to get close to."

She went back to her desk and Clark continued to work on his background paragraphs about Gotham, but his mind wasn't really on it. Lois's worried eyes and Cat's knowing sneer lingered in his mind. Finally, he opened up his web browser and typed into the search engine: _prince of gotham gossip._ Pages of links scrolled by: reports of another crashed car, another drunken public fight with a starlet, a jet-ski accident. Clark hesitated for a moment, then went back to the search engine and added the word "sex" to his search terms. This time the results were more specialized, but still fairly predictable: speculation about which men or women he was seeing, photos of him flirting with pretty people, a lopsided smile on his face.

Clark went back once more to the search engine. This time he hesitated even longer. Then he added the word "kinky" to the search terms. His hand hovered over the "enter" key, irresolute for a moment. Then he clicked it.

"Kent!" Perry's bellow made him almost jump through the ceiling--literally.

"Yes, Chief?" he said cheerfully, hastily minimizing the browser.

"That new Gotham story you promised me had better be on my desk by next week!"

"But sir, I haven't finished gathering information--"

"--then gather faster, Kent! This isn't the Oxford English Dictionary you're working for, it's a newspaper! And newspapers have something called _deadlines!_" Perry shifted the cigar in his mouth irritably. "And don't call me Chief!"

The door rattled behind him.

Clark sighed and tried not to meet the sympathetic glances of his co-workers. He went back to his background paragraph and managed a couple more sentences. Then erased them. Then tried again. And erased again.

He looked around. No one seemed to be paying attention to him now.

He clicked on the web browser with the search results.

It was obvious from the first link why Lois had been reluctant to speak in detail about Cat's insinuations. _A dark-haired Prince was once again spotted emerging from the Black Cat rather after the witching hour. It seems Gotham's most eligible bachelor has some rather esoteric tastes. Brush up on your leatherworking skills, ladies!_

The others--the ones that weren't just cut-and-pastes of the first one--were more of the same: sly and insinuating, urbanely jaded, and all absolutely unsourced. No hard evidence at all. Clark opened up the search engine again: _Gotham Black Cat._

He minimized it after a glance and looked around the room, but no one was looking at his screen, thank goodness. He didn't really want to explain why he was gaping at a page dedicated to what appeared to be the most posh, decadent S&amp;M club in the world. A picture of a St. Andrew's Cross dominated the center of the page, adorned with a nearly-naked young woman, her arms and legs spread to the ends of the X shape, a blindfold hiding her eyes. Beneath that was a photo of a set of stocks, a handsome young man imprisoned in them, his head flung back. Clark couldn't see his face clearly. He had dark hair.

He saw again the bruise on Bruce's hand, dark and mottled, the way Bruce had pulled his hand back to hide it. The shadows under his eyes. The streak of pain, self-mocking, that touched his voice at times. The feeling Clark had when around him, of a man on the verge of self-immolation, of hurling himself down from a great height. Deep passion, deep guilt. A man throwing himself into suffering like an abyss. It made sense.

Like so much about Gotham, it made perfect sense, and yet it felt utterly _wrong_ at the same time.

"That had better be research for the Gotham story, Kent!" Perry's voice boomed from the door to his office, and Clark closed the window slightly more swiftly than a normal human could.

"It is, boss!" Perry's door swung shut again, and Clark drew a long breath. This information was none of his business. It was no connection to his story, and he could write this story without Wayne's help, publish it despite Wayne's threats. What Bruce Wayne did in his private life had nothing at all to do with him.

Eyes like an infinite fall into nothingness. A hand clutching in its sleep, as if reaching for a lifeline. Broken blood vessels under the skin, weeping pain into flesh.

Clark picked up the phone again. This time he dialed a slightly different number.

**: : :**

The man behind the desk steepled his hands and raised his eyebrows quizzically. "I beg your pardon?" said Lucius Fox, CEO of Wayne Enterprises.

Clark Kent matched his expression. "I said I found it very interesting that Coleman Reese, the man who threatened to expose Batman's identity, works for Bruce Wayne." Fox's look remained blandly inquisitive, as if Clark had said something mildly interesting about the weather. "Bruce Wayne," Clark clarified, "The man who lost someone dear to him due to what could be considered an error of judgment on Batman's part."

Fox frowned. "I believe the blame for Rachel Dawes' death is rather more directly the Joker's, don't you agree?"

"Oh, I do," said Clark. "But Mr. Wayne himself said that he blamed Batman for it."

The frown became something of a wince for a brief moment. "He said that," Fox said, his tone somewhere between a question and a statement.

"Batman has apparently cost Bruce Wayne quite a lot," Clark said.

"He has," Fox said softly.

"Enough that he would use one of his employees to try and get at Batman?" Clark leaned forward, pressing his advantage. "Did he pay Reese to claim he knew Batman's identity?"

There were sharp lines between Fox's eyebrows now. "Mr. Kent, why would he pay a flunky of his to risk his safety to make Batman's life difficult? Why not just do it himself?"

Clark didn't want to admit he didn't have a good answer to that, especially since Bruce didn't seem the kind of man to shy away from risk--or making a public spectacle of himself. "Maybe with his reputation he knew no one would believe him?" he said.

Fox's expression went thunderous; his hands came down on the desk sharply. "_Mister_ Kent," he articulated carefully. "I will have you know that you are making slanderous accusations against my employer. I will not stand for that." There was a long, heavy silence in which Fox's expression softened, became somehow vaguely entreating. "You've met him," Fox said. "Does he truly seem to you to be the kind of man who would risk the life of someone he was responsible for?"

"I--I--no," Clark said, looking down at the desk, at Fox's strong hands resting on it. "He doesn't. I'm just throwing out theories here." He looked back up at Fox. "There's something wrong here, something that doesn't fit. I'm a reporter. I have to make the pieces fit together somehow. It's my _job._ To expose lies to the light of truth. To bring justice."

Fox tilted his head to the side, his good humor mostly restored, but something warning continued to lurk behind his eyes. "Mr. Kent, this is Gotham. Not everything fits together here."

"Everyone keeps saying that," Clark grumbled.

"Perhaps it is more accurate to say that some puzzles are not meant to be solved."

Clark growled under his breath. "Usually there are pieces missing in a puzzle. In this one there seem to be too _many_ pieces, and they overlap and contradict and..." He trailed off. "It doesn't make any sense." He looked up at Fox. "So where is Coleman Reese now?"

Lucius Fox frowned. "Whether he actually knew Batman's identity or not, it was too dangerous for him to continue working in Gotham. We gave him a job at a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises--there are quite a lot of them--and he took a new name. And no," he went on, "I will not tell you where he is."

"I wouldn't have asked," Clark said.

"Hm," said Fox. "Perhaps you wouldn't have."

Clark stood to go, then turned back. "Is Mr. Wayne in right now, do you know?"

Fox grinned at him broadly. "Do I _look_ like his social secretary?" He shook his head slightly at Clark's attempt at an apology. "Mr. Wayne comes and goes as he pleases, a free spirit, a wind that passes through all our lives and--"

"You're saying he's not in."

"It is rather unlikely." Fox tilted his head. "Can I answer some questions in his place?"

"No, uh..." Clark found himself feeling somehow awkward under Fox's patient gaze. "He was showing me around Gotham, and then he got very busy, and..."

Fox chuckled. "You would be surprised how often I hear that," he said.

"It wasn't like that," Clark said swiftly, feeling stung--on his own behalf or Bruce's, he wasn't sure. "He was telling me what he loves about Gotham, trying to convince me to--to see it like he does. Just talking about his plans for the city, the projects he's involved with, the future he wants to build here. There was nothing...personal about it."

For the first time since Clark came in, Lucius Fox seemed taken aback. "Nothing personal?" he repeated slowly. He looked at Clark for a long moment, his eyes narrowed. "What do you think of Mr. Wayne?"

Startled by the abrupt question, Clark said, "He's a good man." He stopped and tried to frame a more coherent response. Fox was still watching him. "He loves Gotham. He's...intense, a lot more intense than he lets most people see. He's..." Clark frowned and met Fox's eyes. "I think he needs a friend."

Fox sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, the genial smile wiped from his face. "You've probably started to figure this out, Mr. Kent, but Mr. Wayne is not an easy man to get close to. If he doesn't want to see you, it's going to be hard to track him down."

"So you're saying I should just give up." Clark heard the disappointment in his voice, struggled to keep it off his face. He suspected he wasn't doing very well.

Fox's eyebrows were raised in faint surprise. "I said no such thing." On that enigmatic note, he stood and showed Clark toward the door. "If you do manage to track him down, tell him I think he ought to keep showing you the city. Tell him I said he's working too hard, and he should take a break now and then."

_Working too hard?_ "There's no need to be sarcastic, Mr. Fox," protested Clark.

Lucius Fox laughed out loud as he ushered him out of the office.

**: : :**

Alfred opened the curtains, letting light stream across the bed. Bruce Wayne made a muffled groaning noise, putting his forearm over his eyes. "I believe you said you wanted to be up fairly early to double-check the security for the fundraiser tonight," Alfred pointed out.

Bruce heaved himself onto his side, wincing, and Alfred saw dark red stains on the white cotton where his shoulders had been. "Nng," said Bruce. "Tore the damn stitches open again. Need to come up with a stronger material." He made it to the side of the bed and took the robe Alfred handed him. "Thanks."

Alfred shook his head, looking down at the sheets. "Master Wayne, this can't continue. It breaks my heart to see this." He reached down and touched the red stains, stark against the white.

Bruce finished sashing his robe slowly. "You know, you have a point, Alfred."

"I do?"

"Yes." Bruce looked over his shoulder at the butler. "Go out and buy a few sets of black sheets today, would you?"

**: : :**

The number of people in Gotham willing to donate money to charity in order to have an evening with Superman was not as high as it might have been in Metropolis, but it was still going to be a good evening for the East End Revitalization Project. Superman nodded and shook hands and made small talk, spotting various faces in the crowd that he knew already: Mayor Garcia, Lucius Fox, James Gordon, even the cool aquamarine eyes of Dr. Harleen Quinzell. And of course, Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne, working the crowd with a slightly tipsy smile on his face, beaming and shaking hands. He was moving stiffly, a slight favoring of one shoulder that most people wouldn't have noticed.

He also seemed to be avoiding Superman again.

Superman found himself obscurely annoyed by this. Maybe he'd gotten so used to having Bruce speak to Clark Kent so directly, so earnestly, meeting his eyes so squarely, that it was strange to have his eyes flicker over Superman and move on. It was ironic, really. He was used to having people overlook him as _Clark_, not Superman. On a sudden impulse, he started to make his way through the crowd to Bruce's side--but as he did James Gordon stepped up to the small stage and picked up the microphone.

"Um. Is this thing on?" Gordon's amplified voice echoed across the room. Someone giggled. "Great," he muttered. Then he squared his shoulders and looked out at the crowd. "I'd like to thank you all for coming out tonight to raise money to get the East End police department new equipment. As you know, the streets of Gotham are a beautiful but dangerous place, and the money you've donated tonight will equip our fine officers with bullet-proof vests and state of the art restraints without raising citizens' taxes." A smattering of applause; Superman looked over to see Bruce Wayne with a redhead of each sex on either arm, casting an admiring gaze up at Gordon. Gordon cleared his throat again, looking stiff and uncomfortable. "I'm not one for fancy speeches, so all I can do is thank you from the bottom of my heart." He waved the microphone around vaguely, looking for someone to hand it to, and Mayor Garcia stepped up and took it, flashing a brilliant smile at the crowd.

Commissioner Gordon thanks you, I thank you, the boys and girls in blue thank you, and I'm sure--" Garcia cast his eyes upward briefly, "--That wherever Harvey Dent is, he thanks you too." He waited for the applause to die down before continuing. "Today we're joined by a man that Harvey would certainly have approved of, a man I wish Harvey had gotten a chance to meet. I'm speaking, of course, of the Man of Steel from Metropolis, Superman." He gestured toward Superman and the crowd rippled its attention toward him, a hundred curious eyes.

Bruce Wayne was whispering in one of the redheads' ears and didn't spare a glance at him.

"Superman," said Garcia, "Gotham is proud to stand beside you in the light of heroism. In a time marked by dangerous lunatics like the Joker and Batman and their attempts to bring chaos and despair to our fine city, it is always a comfort to know that the people of Gotham refuse to be cowed. That good people will stand up to their dark shadows and try to bring some security and sanity to the streets."

Beside Garcia, Commissioner Gordon's face was stiff and expressionless, as if he were concealing some strong emotion. Triumph? Fury? Superman couldn't tell.

Garcia was nodding approvingly at his audience. "No matter what evil stalks the night of Gotham, we _choose_ to embrace the light, and all that is good in people."

Enthusiastic applause greeted Garcia's speech, filling the ballroom. Under it, however, Superman heard a different sound: a low, gleeful chuckle.

He looked over to see Dr. Quinzel laughing quietly to herself, her eyes sparkling with mischief as they watched the mayor.

When she turned her head and saw Superman watching her, the laugh cut off suddenly, although the delighted glint in her eyes remained. "I'm sorry," she said to his questioning look. "I was just thinking of something extremely amusing someone told me recently."

"What was it?" Superman asked.

She shook her head. "I guess you had to be there." She patted a blue bicep appreciatively. "And I'm not sure you'd get it anyway, Big Blue." The laughter in her eyes touched her lips again and she wandered off into the crowd, still chuckling to herself.

Feeling oddly unnerved, Superman scanned the crowd, looking for Bruce Wayne. But at some point after Gordon's speech, he had disappeared--along with both redheads. Clark frowned at the emotion that twisted inside him at that realization. _Stop it,_ he told himself sternly.

But the party felt hollow, the revelry false and empty. Superman was, of course, required to stay the full evening to make sure everyone got their money's worth (with short breaks for various floods and earthquakes): trapped in a gilded cage, being peered at by Gotham's elite.

It was late when Superman was finally able to break free, the party still winding down but mostly over. He started to head back to Metropolis, then found himself landing instead in a dark alley, changing into his Clark Kent clothing.

He walked toward Wayne Towers, following the current of the crowds, gazing up at the lights of the city. Trying not to remember how they had looked ghosting across Bruce Wayne's face. At the foot of the great, imposing building, he looked upward, taking it in.

And so he happened to be looking up when Bruce Wayne appeared on the roof of Wayne Towers, looking down at the city. He was alone, but still carrying a mostly-empty champagne glass, which he put down carefully. Then he climbed onto the railing, seventy-eight stories above Gotham.

As Clark watched, Bruce Wayne stepped out into the air and fell.


	6. Chapter 6

_"Bruce!"_

The name was wrenched from Clark's chest, ripped away into the winter air unheard.

Bruce Wayne was falling, tumbling toward the street below, his arms outspread.

He had been falling for exactly .85 seconds. He had about nine seconds left before he hit the ground.

Clark stared around the busy street, looking for an alley. Eight and a quarter seconds left. His hands were on the top buttons of his shirt, he was running, still looking up. Eight seconds. He saw someone point. Seven and three-quarters seconds. He heard a woman scream. Seven and a half seconds. He caught a glimpse of Bruce's face, terrifyingly calm, as if gazing at eternity.

And then there was a pale blossom of silken blue, like the sky opening up above Bruce. A parachute. It opened and Bruce was floating downward, laughing now, sailing between the skyscrapers like an azure feather.

There were police sirens somewhere, moving closer. Clark stood frozen for a long moment, his heart hammering. Then he began to follow the scrap of blue silk through the streets, tracking its descent.

He found Bruce tangled in a cherry tree in Robinson Park, the bare branches draped with blue cloth. He was laughing as the police surrounded the tree, _paparazzi_ flashbulbs starting to go off. He stopped laughing but the amused glint stayed in his eyes as Commissioner Gordon strode toward the tree, his shoulders hunched with fury. "Hiya, Commish," he said, waving. "I'm glad you guys showed up! I might need a little help getting out of this tree--"

"--You reckless, inane, simpleminded, suicidal _idiot_," raged Gordon. "You could have been taken for the Batman and shot out of the sky, did that ever cross your half-baked mind?"

"Oh please," said Bruce, waving a hand. The gesture made him swing slightly from his parachute lines, like a puppet. "I think the Gotham police can tell the difference between a fine upstanding citizen like myself and a crazed maniac like the Batman."

Gordon's face turned a dangerous shade of red. "We'll see how cocky you are in jail, Wayne."

"Did I do something illegal?" Bruce raised a puzzled eyebrow. "Let's see, I jumped off of my own building and landed safely in a public park. No trespassing there. I'm sorry, Jimmy, you can't make that stick."

Gordon's jaws worked for a moment, like he was grinding outrage between his teeth. "That's _Commissioner Gordon_ to you, Wayne."

"Ah, surely we've known each other long enough to get to first names now?" Bruce said plaintively. Then he caught sight of Clark Kent, standing beyond Gordon. For an instant his eyes widened, and Clark saw something in his face that hadn't been there on the ledge: a spark of panic. Then he grinned widely and waved. "Clark! Did you see that jump? Wasn't it great? You really can see Gotham differently from the air, it's so gorgeous. You should try it sometime--put _that_ in your paper."

Clark looked up at him in his pinstriped suit, twisting slowly. "I don't think Alfred would approve of you jumping without a helmet, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce grimaced. "Mr. Wayne, Mr. Wayne, always Mr. Wayne," he said. He sighed loudly and looked up at the sky. "All the good, honest people call me Mr. Wayne, and all the pretty people call me Brucie. C'mon, Jimmy," he implored the Commissioner, "Call me Bruce. Just once. I know you can do it."

Jim Gordon stabbed a finger at him. "You're a spoiled, selfish, ignorant _brat_, Wayne. I don't care how much the papers love you, or how much money you shovel at charities. You're a danger to yourself and everyone around you." He wheeled, gesturing to his officers, and stalked back to his car, his back stiff with anger.

Bruce beamed down at Clark. "He's a pretty good judge of character, isn't he? He shouldn't call me ignorant, though. I mean, I've bought some of the finest degrees this country has to offer." He fiddled with his harness. "Whoops!" He fell the last few feet to the ground and landed ungracefully, sprawling. The camera flashes were like strobe lights in the dark, turning his fall into a series of frozen moments, a flickering stop-action descent. He pulled himself together, still sitting on the ground, and offered up his smile to the _paparazzi_ until they tired of photographing him and drifted away, murmuring.

"You haven't finished showing me Gotham," Clark said as last bystander faded into the darkness.

Bruce stood up, brushing at his dirty pants knees. "Right. Sorry. So busy lately. Had to show a darling Kasnian princess around, and one thing led to another..." He winked at Clark. "You know how it is."

"Not exactly."

"Well, you're obviously going to all the wrong parties, then," Bruce said briskly, "But I'm sure I can pencil you in sometime next week. Get in touch with my secretary and we'll come up with something."

Clark bit down on irritation. "That sounds good," he said as though he hadn't been given an obvious brush-off. "I've got other contacts I need to interview anyway. I haven't talked to the mayor or Commissioner Gordon yet, for example. And I have an appointment to meet with Aaron Cash tomorrow afternoon at three-thirty."

Bruce's gaze flickered. Then he smiled. "Any relation to Johnny Cash?"

"No, he's the head of security at Arkham Asylum." _Which you knew perfectly well._ Clark turned away from Bruce and started to walk toward the gate of the park. "He said he'd consider letting me do an interview with the Joker. It would be the first ever, and I can hardly pass on a scoop like that--"

"--Clark." He turned to see Bruce standing very still in the moonlight, his face pale. "He won't let you see the Joker. No one sees the Joker."

"He said he'd think about it. I'm hoping I can convince him--"

"_No one_ sees the Joker. And that's the way it should be," Bruce said, his voice heavy and colorless as lead. "You can't see him, Clark. If the bastard didn't find some way to kill you outright, he'd...twist you." There was a sick loathing in his voice. "He can do that, take anything bright and meaningful and turn it to ashes, to a mockery of itself. He'll take anything you love and make your love seem a perversion, a hollow shell over a weeping abscess."

Clark had baited him on purpose, a subtle threat: if Clark's theories about Batman and Dent were correct, the Joker was the only other person who knew the whole story. But Bruce's vehemence caught him off guard. "Despite what you might think, Mr. Wayne, I'm not an easy man to manipulate."

"You don't _get it,"_ Bruce snapped. "It's not manipulation, it's...corruption. And the more high-minded, the more pure and noble you are, the worse it is when he drags your heart into the filth. He makes you choose, makes you sacrifice something you love, and then you realize the sacrifice means _nothing._ And then he laughs." Bruce's fists clenched. "He _laughs_."

"Like he did to Harvey Dent," Clark said, and Bruce's face went blank and closed.

"Not Harvey," said Bruce. "Batman. Batman was just your run-of-the-mill, over-zealous vigilante, and then the Joker happened, and now he's responsible for all those deaths--"

"--Batman did not kill those people," Clark interrupted, but Bruce just raised his voice and talked over his words.

"--He's _responsible for all those deaths,_" he repeated angrily. "He's become a symbol of horror and despair, of everything that's wrong with Gotham. You _must_ see this!"

"If he's become that symbol, it's in part because of what _you've_ done to him!" Clark kept his voice low, but Bruce flinched as though it were a shout. "What did the Joker say to you, Mr. Wayne?"

Bruce stared. "I never--"

"--He was at the fund raiser you held for Harvey Dent. He threw Rachel Dawes out a window and then he disappeared. You disappeared too. Did he find you?" Clark began to walk toward Bruce, and Bruce fell back a step. "What did he make _you_ choose? How did he drag your heart into the filth?" He kept walking forward until he was very close to Bruce. "What sacrifice are you making?"

Bruce's breath was quick and shallow, his voice hoarse. "Sacrifice." He blinked at Clark as if gazing into a bright light. "Sacrifice." Then an impish smile tweaked the corner of his mouth, shockingly incongruous. When he spoke again his voice was filled with flippant laughter. "The Joker didn't waste his time with me. He doesn't give a damn about _Bruce Wayne_," he sneered. "He goes after people who make a difference. People who matter. _Good_ people. What would he try to get me to sacrifice? My fast cars? My pretty girls and boys? My imported champagne?" He chuckled, but his eyes were dark. "Don't be ridiculous, Clark. You can't corrupt someone who's already rotten to the core." He shook his head, smiling indulgently, as if at a charming child. "I'll pick you up in front of Wayne Towers at three tomorrow to show you more of Gotham. We'll make an afternoon of it."

"I told you I have a meeting with Aaron Cash at three-thirty."

"That's the time I have, Clark. Take or leave it. I'm a very busy man. Speaking of which--" He pulled a cell phone out of his breast pocket and hit a button. "Alfred? I'm at the west gate of Robinson Park. My chute's tangled in a tree--come get it down so the police don't slap me with a fine for littering, would you?" He snapped the phone shut and grinned at Clark. "So, three o'clock tomorrow, then?"

"If you don't show, I'm still going to Arkham."

Bruce waved his words off. "Of course, of course. Three it is, then--that is, unless I find something more fun to do." He winked broadly. "Or some_one_."

Clark watched him stroll back toward Wayne Towers, brushing twigs and leaves off of his tailored suit. Then he wandered over to the cherry tree and leaned against it. Alfred Pennyworth found him there a few minutes later, gazing up at the sky-blue parachute.

"Why does he do this?" Clark asked as Alfred blinked at him. "All this..." He waved his hands, "Jumping off buildings and climbing cliffs and crashing cars. Why does he risk his life so pointlessly?"

Alfred's face was gray in the moonlight. "Because what life he has, he has because of exactly that," Alfred said. "You must understand. When his parents died, Bruce was...lost."

Clark nodded. "Survivor's guilt. I...know something of that."

Alfred inclined his head. "Master Wayne's actions are neither as careless nor as pointless as you seem to think. I believe in those moments on the edge, when he appears to be throwing himself into heedless danger, are the rare moments when he is at peace with himself."

"He doesn't have to do all this," Clark said. "There are other ways."

"Perhaps for other people," Alfred said. He started toward the tree, but Clark raised a hand to stop him.

"Let me." Clark clambered into the tree and started untangling the silk from the clinging branches. "Not very polite of him, leaving you to clean up his messes."

From the ground, Alfred chuckled slightly. "I believe he was motivated less by laziness and more by alarm. You appear to...unnerve him."

Clark almost fell out of the tree. "You said you wouldn't tell him--!"

Alfred frowned up at him, his expression mingling puzzlement and offense. "And I have not."

"You can't mean he's afraid of _me_," Clark said, furrowing his brow at the tangled parachute lines. Even with microscopic vision he wasn't sure he'd ever get the snarls out, but he hated to just cut them. "Oh, I suppose it's the story he's worried about."

"That's likely a part of it."

"Well, at least he agreed to meet me tomorrow. It took some work, but--"

"--He did?" Alfred's voice was so surprised that Clark looked down at him, but the butler's face was already back to its usual impassivity.

"He said he'd meet me at Wayne Enterprises at three." The last knot in the parachute lines finally parted, and Clark made a small triumphant sound as he pulled the chute free and let it flutter toward Alfred. "So make sure he's there, okay?"

Alfred caught the fluttering cloth out of the air and folded it with swift economy. "He shall be, even if I must hogtie and deliver him myself, Mr. Kent."

The park was deserted except for the two of them now, but Clark still took the time to scramble down from the tree as though gravity applied to him. Alfred looked him over and picked a few twigs off his suit with the unconscious economy of a person who tidied others for a living.

"May I ask," Alfred said, still looking at his shoulders, "What your intentions are toward Master Wayne?" Only Alfred Pennyworth, thought Clark, could say "Master Wayne" and pronounce it like "my son."

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?" Alfred's eyebrows went up. "I mean, everyone keeps assuming I'm flirting with him, or he's flirting with me, or something. It's not that," Clark said. "I mean, it's not that he isn't handsome and charming," he added. Alfred's eyebrows went back down and he looked distinctly amused, which only flustered Clark more. "And I enjoy spending time with him. It's not only for the story, though he's got so much useful information about Gotham. It's...more than that. I just want to help him. I want to...protect him, I guess." He shrugged and laughed a little. "I know that sounds silly. But when I'm with him, I want to protect him."

Alfred's face was no longer amused. "It's not silly at all, Mr. Kent. But Bruce Wayne doesn't need protection." His hands tightened in the blue silk he was holding, a quick helpless motion, and he looked beyond Clark to the gleaming lights of Gotham. "What he needs is _salvation_. And I'm afraid that cannot be given. Not even by Superman."


	7. Chapter 7

Lucius Fox put away the last of the schematics and locked the drawer with an emphatic _click._ He shot a quick glance at his employer as they walked toward the heavy steel doors of the high-security elevator. "By the way," he said, "A Mr. Kent came to visit me yesterday. He seemed anxious to see you."

If Bruce Wayne had known that his total and steely lack of a reaction gave away so much to Lucius, he probably would have deliberately shown more response. "Hm," he said, jabbing the "up" button. "Yes. He's supposed to meet me here in..." A glance at the heavy silver watch that covered up some of the scratches from last night's encounter with the cherry tree. "...two hours."

"He seems...inquisitive."

Bruce grunted, staring at the floor indicator. The doors opened ponderously and they stepped into the elevator.

"He also seemed to find you rather charming," Lucius said. He heard Bruce suck in a sudden breath, saw the sunken eyes reflected in the steel doors flash over to him. "I have no idea why," he added blandly.

"I don't have time for this," Bruce muttered, more to himself than Lucius. "I mean, it's useful to keep him close and keep track of him. But it's...it's..."

Lucius reached out and pressed the button that stopped the elevator in its tracks. "Mr. Wayne." Bruce blinked at him as if only half-listening. "You're a human being. You need human connections."

"I've got you, I've got--"

"Not old men like Alfred and I," Lucius said gently. "You need something we can't give you."

Bruce stared at the elevator buttons, and Lucius was a bit shocked to see his cheeks reddening. "It's too risky," he said. "If he sees me...undressed, he'll realize--"

"I'm not talking about _sex,_" Lucius said, unsure whether he felt more pity or exasperation. "You need a friend."

Bruce closed his eyes as if Lucius had struck him in the chest. "I can't be his friend if I can't tell him the truth. And I won't do that."

"I know." He did know. Bruce had lost far too much to lower his guard again. "But we all have sides of ourselves that our friends never see. Maybe you can...let him see as much of you as possible. Just not _that_."

Bruce leaned forward and rested his forehead for a second on the shining silver walls of the elevator. His reflection peered back at him, wan and weary. "Beyond _that_, Lucius...there isn't much of me left to see. Nothing of value."

"I don't believe that, sir." Lucius jabbed the button to start the elevator again, hearing the grimness in his own voice. "I simply don't believe that."

**: : :**

Clark Kent snapped his cell phone shut, frowning, just as a midnight-blue convertible pulled up to the curb, Bruce Wayne waving from the interior as cheerfully as if he hadn't almost fallen to his death the night before. "Get in before you freeze!" Bruce called.

The inside of the car was done up in a retro style--dark brown leather, circular dials with needle indicators, a thin, wide driver's wheel. Impressive attention to detail, Clark thought, then looked harder and frowned.

"Mr. Wayne, this car..."

"A 1959 Ferrari California Spyder LWB," Bruce announced. He patted the steering wheel like an exotic and beloved pet.

Clark stared at him. "This must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars!"

Bruce threw back his head and laughed, nudging the car back into traffic. "There are ten of this make of car in the world, Clark." His right hand caressed the gearshift in a frankly intimate manner, zipping them through the city streets with alacrity. "I'm just sorry it's too cold to leave the top down." He cast a sideways glance at Clark's face. "None of my business, of course, but you're looking glum today. What's the problem?"

"I just got off the phone with Jack Ryder," Clark said. "He wants me to come on his show tomorrow, talk about 'the Metropolis viewpoint on the Batman menace.'"

Bruce turned the wheel a little too sharply and the tires of the Ferrari squealed in protest as they went around a corner. "You do know that our deal applies not just to newspapers, but also to crackpot faux-news shows that nobody watches?" His voice was tight.

"Perry says I have to go. He says it'll be good publicity for the _Planet_."

"Not an answer to my question."

Clark stared out the window for a moment. "Of course. Besides, Ryder probably wouldn't let me finish if I tried. He hates Batman even more than you do."

"The man's a hack," muttered Bruce, "But even a hack can be right about one thing."

"So no," said Clark. "I have no plans to insist on Batman's innocence on the show tomorrow." He noted the way Bruce's shoulder's relaxed, the way his brow unfurrowed, and couldn't help adding, "I'm not doing it as a favor to _you,_ you know."

Bruce cast him an airy grin. "I'm just relieved I don't have to find a way to cut power to Ryder's studio tomorrow," he said. "That would take literally _minutes_ out of my busy schedule."

"Har har," Clark said as Bruce turned off onto a side street lined with spreading walnuts. Today the tour started in some of the more posh residential neighborhoods, along winding boulevards and past stately brownstones. After that, though, Bruce drove through some of the most shabby, run-down areas Clark had seen of Gotham. "Wouldn't want you to see just the haves," Bruce said at Clark's questioning look. "Some people might say this is the real heart of Gotham. Not me, of course," he said with a laugh. "Not publicly. I've got my shareholders' egos to think of."

However, nothing could hide the pride that shone in his eyes as he pointed out a small community park, carefully tended. "And look at this," he said, slowing down as they passed a sign proclaiming the area was under a community watch. "Let's make a **dent** in crime," the sign announced. "That's new," Bruce said. "Just started a few months ago." The smile he turned on Clark had a pleading edge to it: _please listen. Please understand._

Clark listened, but he wasn't sure he understood.

Bruce pointed out more landmarks, rattling off their history with a facility that might have astonished the socialites he usually passed time with. He seemed to know which mansions had ghosts or tragedies, which patches of cobblestone were the sites of riots or accidents. Seen through his eyes, the whole city seemed steeped in history, shrouded in stories like mist.

The sun was going down when Bruce glanced at his watch; Clark expected him to suggest he take Clark back to his hotel room, but instead he said "How's about we get some takeout food and I'll take us across to the mainland so you can see the whole city at once?"

A few moments later and Clark found himself holding a bag of takeout _gyros_ as the little Ferrari whipped in and out of traffic. "And here we have the New Trigate Bridge," Bruce said, gesturing as they started to cross the graceful, sweeping suspension bridge. "It's the newest bridge in Gotham, built a mere decade ago. Two levels--the train runs along underneath us."

Clark looked out and saw the river far below, dotted with ice floes. A boat churned ponderously through the water, heading toward the city. "Is that the ferry that--"

"--One of them, yes." Bruce glanced out at the river while maneuvering between two trucks. "That's the _Liberty_," he said without hesitation, although the name on the bow couldn't be seen. "Have you interviewed any of the passengers from the ships yet? Now _that's_ an inspiring story."

"I haven't," Clark said, making a note in his book. It had been done by other papers, of course. But as part of a larger story about Gotham...he grimaced slightly to himself. He already _had_ a story about Gotham, it was just a matter of convincing Bruce it was the right story to print.

"I can introduce you to one of them. John Maguire, although he usually goes by 'Tiny.'" Bruce chuckled to himself, as if at a personal joke. "He was on the _Spirit_."

"That was the ship with the criminals on it," Clark said, surprised. He'd expected Bruce would have contacts with the regular civilians.

"He got out on parole a few months later. Works for Wayne Enterprises now. Special outreach program." Bruce whipped by another semi and the struts of the bridge whirred by the window. "Turns out he's very skilled with microelectronics." He flashed a quick smile at Clark. "See? I can be useful sometimes."

"You've been very helpful, Mr. Wayne," Clark said.

Bruce's hands gripped the steering wheel a little tighter and he turned left as they came off the bridge. The road twisted and turned upward along the bluffs, and Bruce took every curve just a little too fast. Eventually he pulled off at an overlook: below them the river plain was lined with warehouses and factories, but the main island of Gotham glittered like a treasure trove of gems scattered on black velvet. Bruce reached out and grabbed the bag of _gyros_ from Clark. "These are the best," he muttered, pulling out a wrapped oblong and handing it back to Clark.

Clark looked at the gleaming leather and shining chrome and felt paralyzed at the very idea of getting _tzatziki_ sauce on a vintage Ferrari, but Bruce had already unwrapped his and was consuming it greedily. "Tell me about yourself," Bruce said with his mouth full.

Clark blinked at him, then applied himself to carefully unwrapping one corner of his _gyro_ and taking a tiny bite. "Not much to tell," he said.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Bruce. "Everyone has a story to tell. Yours starts in Kansas--what? I am capable of typing a name into Google," he said at Clark's look.

"Well, it was a pretty average childhood," _for an alien with superpowers_. "I was adopted when I was a baby, I don't remember my birth parents." He hadn't meant to say much, but he found himself talking about his parents, his childhood. He expected Bruce's attention to wander, but he listened with a fierce intentness, as if looking down from a vast height and memorizing the terrain. Clark talked about the farm, the lowing of the cows in the early morning, the ripples of corn in the wind. "It was the perfect place to grow up," he said softly, remembering.

"But you never really felt like you fit in." Bruce shrugged when Clark looked at him. "I mean, you didn't stay there, right?"

Clark shrugged in turn. "I fell in love with words," he said. "Putting them together, watching them make ideas real."

"You needed to go somewhere you felt you could make a difference." Bruce nodded and took another bite. "Metropolis is a good choice. The City of Tomorrow and all that."

"Metropolis is always looking forward," Clark said thoughtfully. "We seem so anxious to leave the past behind."

"The past isn't always a pretty thing," Bruce said, watching Gotham.

"Those who don't learn from it are doomed to repeat it."

Bruce snorted. "Santayana wasn't from Gotham. Perhaps we're doomed to never leave it." His eyes were more solemn than you would expect in a playboy wearing an expensive suit and munching on a gyro. "Damned souls trapped in our own special hell."

The lights glimmered in the dark. "If it's hell, it's a rather beautiful hell," Clark noted.

Bruce's smile was fond, affectionate, not directed at him. "She is beautiful, isn't she? My dark and demanding lady."

There was an undercurrent to his voice, a low and intimate frisson that made Clark suddenly feel very much on the outside. In the moonlight, the fresh scratches on his hand were a lurid blue-black, almost but not quite covering the fading bruise from before. The scabs were rough, grooves of dried pain under his fingers, like a map to some lost place.

Bruce was looking at him.

Clark pulled his hand back and found he had nothing at all to say. "I wish you wouldn't hurt yourself," he said rather than any of the things he was thinking. The words echoed inanely in his own ears.

Bruce's face was unreadable, moonlight casting strange shadows from his eyelashes across his eyes like prison bars. He seemed to be seriously considering his answer. "It's who I am," he said after a moment. Then he smiled and shook his head, playful again. "You sound like Alfred," he said teasingly. "Always worry, worry, worry. 'Master Wayne, you need to get more sleep,'" he said with an exaggerated English accent, pulling his mouth into a frown. "'Master Wayne, you must eat all your vegetables. Master Wayne, no more drunken Roman-style orgies.'" He started the Ferrari and put it into gear. "You both need to understand: without the drunken orgies, life is like this car without the 240 Pferdestarke engine!" His eyes twinkled at Clark in the darkness. "So no more nagging, okay, Clark? You make me sad."

He didn't look sad as he sped them back across the bridge; he was humming the theme from _Mission Impossible_ under his breath as he zig-zagged through traffic. Clark used the momentary silence to get his bearings again--keeping up with Bruce's mercurial mood shifts was challenging work.

The car pulled up in front of Clark's hotel. "Here you go, back safe and sound, not a single car crash." He shrugged. "I can't be super-exciting every night, I guess." He pondered. "Of course, the night is still young..."

"You've shown me a lot of Gotham, but I've never seen your penthouse," Clark said. Maybe if he could see where Bruce lived he could find some key to the mind of this maddeningly elusive man.

Bruce's eyebrows shot up and a smirk tilted his mouth. "Why, _Clark_," he murmured. "I never let someone up to my penthouse on a first date. How fast do you think I am?"

"This is hardly a first date," Clark said. Bruce opened his mouth to riposte, but Clark spoke over him: "After all, we've gotten together three times now."

Bruce's mouth hung open for such a second. He blinked and closed it, rallying. "I would _love_ to admit you to my inner sanctum," he said, managing to make it sound lascivious, "But truly, tonight I have other plans." A small, self-satisfied smile. "Private plans, involving some specialized pleasures." He put his elbow on the stickshift, propped his chin in his hand, and smiled at Clark. "I could bring you along, if you like. I've shown you the heart of Gotham, but I could show you some other parts of its anatomy tonight. Might make for a good story."

Clark was fairly certain Bruce was deliberately baiting him, but the image of the dark-haired man in the stocks rose up in his mind unbidden. When he spoke, his voice sounded stilted and formal. "Thank you, but I'll leave you to your own devices, Mr. Wayne." He started to open the door, but felt a hand catch his sleeve.

Bruce's smile was warm, friendly. Surely Clark was only imagining the touch of strain under it. "If this is our third date, why won't you call me by my first name?" he said. "I would...really like you to call me Bruce."

"I'm sorry," Clark said, getting out of the car, "But I just don't feel like I know you well enough for first names."

The midnight-blue Ferrari didn't move from the curb, but Clark turned his back on it and entered the hotel.

**: : :**

Alfred Pennyworth entered the basement bunker to find Bruce standing in his navy-blue suit and tie, hurling batarangs at the wall target, one after another. _Thunk. Thunk. Thunk._ "To hell with him," Bruce said as Alfred came in.

"I assume you are talking about Mr. Kent, sir?"

"Clark." Bruce threw the name along with another batarang: _Thunk_. "I don't need him to know me, I don't need him to understand me. He's a nosy, pushy bastard." _Thunk._ He stopped and stared at the healing scabs on the back of his hand, running a thumb over them. "He touched me."

"Is that so bothersome?"

"_Yes,_" Bruce snarled. He whirled from Alfred and paced across the bunker twice, back and forth. "I wanted him to," he said when his back was to Alfred.

"Well, that _is_ bothersome," Alfred said.

Bruce shot a baffled, furious glare at him. "Don't laugh at me."

"Never," Alfred said, more softly. "But sir--"

Bruce made a slicing motion with his hand. "I can't think about hi--think about it anymore. I have things I have to do."

"Indeed," said Alfred.

"I haven't been spotted prowling around the S&amp;M clubs for a month or so now, it wouldn't do to let that line of rumor die down. Thought I'd go to the Tenderloin and let myself be seen a bit." Bruce pulled off his suit coat and undid his tie with sharp, vicious motions. "I'll need the pub-crawling clothes."

"Of course," said Alfred. He went to the wardrobe room and fetched a pair of black jeans, a gray shirt and an old coat. When he returned, he found Bruce standing with his shirt unbuttoned, staring straight ahead at nothing. He was running a finger absently across the scabbed back of his hand. "Master Wayne?"

Bruce started. "Oh. Thank you, Alfred." He blinked at the clothes in Alfred's hands as if he didn't know what they were for a moment.

"Are you sure you're okay to go out, sir?"

"Yes. Yes, of course." Bruce took a breath. "Just...give me five minutes."

He sat down and buried his face in his hands. Alfred waited, not moving, holding the clothes, the costume Bruce wore when he played at being a person with needs and pleasures.

Exactly five minutes later, Bruce stood up. "I'm ready now," he said.

**: : :**

Clark Kent paced around his narrow hotel room, glaring out at the lights of Gotham with each pass. On the television, Jack Ryder was interviewing a man who had claimed to see the Batman in person: "How did it feel to stare cold death in the face?" Ryder's breathless voice oozed out of the set. "How did it feel to know you were standing before a merciless killer, a man for whom your life meant less than nothing--"

Clark snapped off the television.

Images tumbled in his mind: a sky-blue parachute, Alfred Pennyworth's face, a fading bruise, a hand on a stickshift, a statue of Harvey Dent, the shadow Wayne Towers cast over all of Gotham. Bruce's voice talking of the Joker, sick and wretched. _He goes after people who make a difference. People who matter._

What had happened to Bruce Wayne that night? What was he planning?

_People who matter._

Clark pulled up the web page of the _Black Cat_ again and fixed the address in his mind. He threw on his coat and headed for the door, too restless and frustrated to stay cooped up a moment longer. He could put all this together, he knew he could. He was so tantalizingly close.

The lights of Gotham winked mockingly at him from the window, coy and elusive.


	8. Chapter 8

Clark Kent pulled his fedora brim lower and his trench coat collar higher as he ghosted a safe distance behind Bruce Wayne through the night-dark streets of Gotham. Any normal human would have lost the quarry, but Clark was able to look through buildings, able to hear Bruce's footsteps.

He wasn't going to lose him.

Bruce had gotten out of his limousine to a brief flurry of attention, and had strolled down the street past various nightclubs and bars with sly names: The Black Cat, the Sacrificial Lamb, the Cream Club, the Burgundy Room. He was wearing an old army coat and jeans, and walked with his shoulders hunched, sneaking furtive glances around as though he wanted to avoid attention. Yet somehow a few people spotted him here and there: a quick glance of recognition, a whisper to a companion.

Bruce Wayne prowled the nightclub district of Gotham City for a half hour without entering a single club.

When he finally nodded to a bouncer and slipped past a black-on-black door under a small sign labeled "The Enclave," Clark stopped in the darkness of an alley and closed his eyes. He didn't want to see what was inside, didn't want to see what Bruce would do there. But he couldn't seem to shut out the sound of Bruce's heartbeat, steady and calm, as it made its way into the building, moving past the sound of gasps and leather striking skin, past moans and the rattle of chains...

...And out the other side?

Clark found himself blinking at a brick wall, bemused. Bruce had passed right through the club and out a back entrance. What was going on? People were spotting him, he was risking his reputation, and he wasn't even stopping?

Maybe these high-class places were too safe for him, the thought crossed his mind. Perhaps Bruce was seeking out the alleys and shadowed places where he could find some true risk, without boundaries and safewords...

"No." Clark heard his own voice, the syllable spoken as if by a stranger, absolutely certain. He pulled out the tiny notebook filled with cramped notes about Gotham from his breast pocket and skipped to the back, where notes of a more personal nature had started piling up. _S&amp;M rumors are false,_ he jotted quickly. _Walks like a policeman on patrol, not seeking. Being seen. Why?_ He paused, underlined the last word twice.

As he finished the second underline, a voice spoke behind him and the pencil lead broke as Clark startled.

"Why are you following me?"

Clark whirled to find Bruce Wayne standing behind him, hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket, glaring. As Clark gaped, Bruce plucked the fedora from his head.

"Trench coat, fedora, little notebook...you look like an extra in an Alfred Hitchcock spy thriller. A ridiculous extra."

Bruce was glowering, his eyes like banked coals. The shadows fell across his face and cast his features into enigmatic angles, the playboy blandness stripped away. He looked angry and dangerous, a man capable of anything, and Clark felt a sense of revelation snap across him like a whipcrack. _Of course._

"I know what you're doing," he said before he could think better of it. "I know."

Bruce's hands tightened on the fedora, crushing cloth. "What?"

"I know what you're doing," Clark repeated. "But you can't. You can't do this to yourself." Now that he realized what was going on, he could feel a fierce urgency in his own words, burning. He had to make Bruce see. He _had to_. He could save him. "You can't throw your life away like this."

"Throw my life away?" Bruce's voice was low, flat, and very dangerous. But his eyes in the darkness glittered with a kind of feverish elation, with something like hope.

"I understand," Clark said. "I know you're willing to sacrifice yourself for Gotham, to save her. But this isn't the way. Don't you see, you'll get yourself killed--!"

The last word was cut off by Bruce's mouth on his.

Clark froze for a moment, going totally still as Bruce's arms went around him. His mouth was warm and gentle, coaxing and sensual, and Clark found himself responding through his shock, his eyes slipping closed, savoring the touch. Bruce deepened the kiss and Clark felt his lips part as though in a dream of dawning lust, unable to resist pulling Bruce closer until they were pressed against each other, a caressing frisson that made it increasingly hard to think of anything except Bruce Wayne's mouth, his warm lips--

Clark managed to pull away with some effort. "Mr. Wayne, I think you're trying to distract me."

Bruce leaned in to catch his mouth again, his breathing uneven, his eyes closed. "How am I doing?" he murmured between swift, unerring kisses.

_Pretty well_, Clark thought. Images of things he wanted to do to Bruce Wayne--_with_ Bruce Wayne--were crowding his mind, making it difficult to focus at all. He hadn't particularly thought he'd been fantasizing about Bruce, but apparently his subconscious had been storing up some shockingly lewd and erotic scenarios for just the right occasion. "I'm not going to let this go," he managed to say, wrenching his mind away from a vivid tableau involving the hood of Bruce's Ferrari and a pair of assless leather chaps. "I'm not going to let you sacrifice yourself for Gotham--"

This time his words were cut off by a finger across his lips. Bruce was glaring at him, his eyes stormy once more. Then Bruce reached down and grabbed the notebook out of his hand. "Hey!" yelped Clark as Bruce started to stride off, clutching it and the fedora.

"For the love of God," Bruce hissed, whirling on him, "We are not talking about this out in public. Come here."

He led Clark through the alley and to a lot across the street to where a cherry-red Aston Martin was waiting. "Get in," he commanded, opening the door and tossing the fedora and notebook in the back seat.

Although the Ferrari had featured heavily in his thoughts, Clark found that the hood of a red Aston Martin was a perfectly fine place to imagine... He sat down gingerly in the passenger seat, trying to catch his breath and think unsexy thoughts. Bruce started the car with a muted roar and threw it into gear, leaping out of the lot. "It's all a front," Clark said. "The bars, the car crashes, the skydiving--it's all to cover what you're really doing."

Bruce drew in a sharp breath. His profile in the flickering streetlights was avid, hawklike, trepidation and elation a hectic light in his eyes. "You've got it all wrong," he said.

"You've got some idea that you can take a public stand, save the soul of Gotham," Clark pressed on. Bruce hit an empty stretch of road and the car accelerated sharply with a tense whine. "You think you can show the people of Gotham that they can stand up to him. But can't you see, it's suicide to take him on!"

The car jolted right as Bruce's hands twitched on the wheel. "What?"

"He won't kill you, not directly. But he's had _years_ of specialized training, and you've only started months ago. He doesn't want you dead, but...you could fall." The image of Bruce falling into the night filled Clark's mind once more. "You'll get hurt. Killed. Even if he doesn't want that."

Bruce's face had gone very still, both the fear and the hope draining from it. "Clark. I need you to tell me what you're talking about."

Clark heard the flatness of his voice, but his mind was already skipping ahead, making new connections, putting together more pieces. "Of course he doesn't want you dead. Of course he doesn't. _You're playing right into his hands._"

The car screeched sideways, careening into an underground parking lot. They skidded past rows of immaculate, priceless cars sitting under blazing incandescent lights, then slammed to a halt. Bruce threw himself out of the car. "I don't have to listen to this," he snarled, his voice shaking.

He stalked toward the elevators, but Clark stepped between them, dogged. "You're going to have to listen to this," he said. Bruce's eyes were dangerous, almost wild, but Clark held his ground. "You _have_ to listen. You have to understand that you're doing exactly what Batman wants you to." Bruce's jaw clenched and his eyes sparked angrily, but Clark kept talking: "I know you want to challenge him, to defy him, like some kind of exorcism of his shadow over Gotham, but that's _exactly what he wants you to do._" Bruce stepped to the side to try to get past him, but Clark moved to block him. "Can't you see? He _needs_ to have a public figure that can stand in the light, to be his other half. He tried working directly with Dent, and it destroyed him. So now he's trying to manipulate another person into being Gotham's crusader, to be her White Knight to his Dark. _You._"

"No," said Bruce. His face was very pale in the fluorescent light. "You're...Clark, you're wrong."

"_Listen to me,_." Clark felt a terrible urgency grip him, igniting his words, bright and blazing. "You and Batman, you're locked together in some kind of twisted cycle of revenge and redemption, but you have to let him go. You _have to let Batman go, Bruce._" Something flared in Bruce's eyes, something new and much more dangerous, but Clark kept talking, desperate, as if the force of his words could make him give up his vendetta, step away from the edge. "Don't let him use you, don't let him break you, Bruce. You give so much to this city, you're so...good, and brave, you deserve so much more than to throw away your life trying to be a symbol, when the real you is so...is so..." _Beautiful_, he wanted to say, and shied away from the word only to find _loved_ there instead, and fell silent entirely, breathing hard and looking at Bruce's white face.

And then there was no place for words at all, as Bruce surged forward and captured his mouth as if he were trying to devour Clark's breath, consume his words. It was nothing like the sweet, sensual kiss from before: Bruce kissed him like a man dying of thirst would kiss a river, trying to drink it dry, wild and greedy and almost angry.

Something in Clark flared to meet that demand, to meet it and transcend it and demand even more in turn. They clashed against each other like swords and there was nothing of sex in any of it, nothing of tenderness, only passion meeting passion like a naked flame.

They reeled together, each giving and taking, pushing and pulling blindly, lost in the kiss, until Clark came up hard against the garage wall with an impact that would have left a human breathless. He gasped for air, stunned by far more than any physical blow, all thoughts gone but the need to touch, to claim, to annihilate himself in Bruce's embrace.

He felt stitches under his fingers and realized he'd pushed Bruce's thin shirt up to reach the skin. The stitches were rough under his fingers and Clark started to follow them upward, a thorny path leading toward the heart. Bruce jerked violently at the touch as though waking from a bad dream. He made a small startled sound that was almost denial, and even through the white-hot blindness enveloping him Clark pulled his hand away, aching.

Bruce caught both Clark's hands in his. "Idiot," he whispered, his eyes falling closed again. "Damned fool." His hands were shaking as they clasped Clark's, holding them between their bodies.

"I'm not a fool," Clark muttered, stung.

"Not you," Bruce said, and moved both of Clark's hands back to his bare skin with one swift movement. Clark's super-sensitive touch could feel every scratch, every faint scar beneath his fingers; he let his thumbs trickle up Bruce's ribcage and heard Bruce make a ragged noise, his back arching against him, all sinew and bone and corded muscle. "Not you," Bruce repeated hoarsely. "Never you, Clark."

"Bruce," said Clark, kissing his neck, breathing him in, running his hands along tortured skin, "Listen to me. You don't need to do this, you don't need to face him alone."

Bruce made a tormented, broken sound. "You're wrong," he said fiercely, shaking Clark's lapels. His gaze was fixed on Clark's face as on some impossibly far and beautiful thing, filled with fury and need. _I don't believe you,_ his eyes said. _Tell me again._

"You're not alone," Clark said. _So passionate, like a dark fire for justice, an unquenchable flame--_ "We're not alone."

Bruce kissed Clark again as if he were defying him, daring him to walk away. If he had heard the change in pronoun, it didn't seem to register. But it registered with Clark, the last puzzle piece falling into place in his own heart.

"We can do this together," he said against Bruce's kiss-bruised mouth. "I won't let the Batman destroy you."

Bruce took a deep breath, like cold water had been thrown over him. He didn't push away, but his body went distant and formal. "Batman can't destroy me," he said. "And you can't help me." He leaned close and his lips caressed the shell of Clark's ear. "But thank you," he whispered, so low that he probably couldn't even hear his own voice. "For trying."

And then he was out of Clark's arms and moving to the car. He opened the door and reached into the back seat, taking out Clark's battered fedora. He tossed the hat at Clark, striding toward the open elevator doors.

Clark had never noticed how fluid and graceful every move he made was until now, when he was moving stiffly, awkwardly, as if he were deeply wounded.

"Bruce," said Clark, hearing the helplessness in his voice like a sob, and Bruce stopped as if seized, one hand clenched into a fist, not turning around.

"I'm sorry," Bruce said. The elevator doors closed and he was gone.

Clark knelt and picked up the fedora at his feet, crushed into a shapeless mass between the two of them. The external door whispered open, and after a long moment Clark straightened and walked of the garage, his eyes unseeing. The door slid closed behind him, leaving him shut out. He stared at the battered cloth in his hands, his thoughts far away. _You can't help me._

_We're not alone._

Slowly, carefully, Clark re-shaped the fedora into its original shape, lingering over each fold and crease until it looked like new.

By the time he clapped it on his head and started the walk to his hotel, he was smiling again.


	9. Chapter 9

"--You're not even _listening_ to me! I have never been so insulted in my life!"

Superman blinked at Livewire's indignant face as he deposited her at the gate of Stryker's Penitentiary. "I'm sorry?" he said politely.

She shrugged her bound arms elaborately, rolling her eyes. "Never mind. Ten minutes of prime wisecracks and innuendo, wasted on Captain Oblivious here," she complained to the approaching guards. She shot Superman a venomous glare. "He was hardly even _paying attention_ when he was fighting me. A girl's got her pride, you know."

"My apologies, Ms Willis. I'd be more than happy to dedicate my attention to you if you were using your powers for good rather than evil."

"Oh, you bet your blue bippy you'll dedicate your attention to me!" Livewire yelled over her shoulder as she was led away. "Next time I'll knock that smug look right off your face! As if I'm going to forget this insult--"

The doors clanged shut behind her and muffled her ranting. Superman sighed in relief, his thoughts already turning from her, back to Gotham and Bruce.

Bruce.

He had hoped a night of patrolling Metropolis would give both of them some space, but instead it had merely created a kind of infinite loop in his head of the sensations and emotions of the night before: rough stitches beneath his fingers, harsh breathing in his ear, Bruce's ferocious mouth--

The Stryker's guards were looking at him strangely and Superman realized he was rubbing his lower lip and staring blankly into space. Had he been looking smug? He suspected he mostly looked dazed. A quick apology later and he was in the air, high above Metropolis and soaring higher, to where the atmosphere thinned and the morning light became translucent azure. A god's-eye view, Lois had called it once, but he felt anything but godly right now.

_You can't help me,_ Bruce had said to Clark Kent. But now matter how sincerely he believed that, part of him yearned to be helped. Part of him wanted to pull Clark closer even as he pushed him away. He had thrown Clark's hat at him, had shown him the door.

But he had also left Clark's notebook in the back seat of his car.

Superman let himself drop downward, let gravity pull him into terminal velocity, friction edging his cape with flame as he descended toward Gotham.

**: : :**

"Investigative reporter!" Batman threw his gauntlet across the penthouse; Alfred watched it skitter like a black spider along the polished tile floor. "Brilliant, hot-shot newshound, my foot!" Bruce Wayne had come back from his jaunt in the red light district a little after midnight, changed into the suit and disappeared into the night without a word to Alfred, returning only as the sun started to rise. He wrenched off a boot and let it drop with a furious _thud_. "All his careful _investigations_, all his intuitions and hunches, and then he goes and decides that I'm training to take out Batman."

Alfred gaped at him. "What?"

Bruce pulled off the cowl, wincing as it tugged at his hair. "Clark Kent, genius reporter, has decided that Batman is setting Bruce Wayne up to be a replacement for Harvey Dent in the public eye. He thinks I'm playing into his hands, trying to be some kind of vigilante hero and stand up to the Dark Knight."

"Bloody hell," Alfred said blankly.

Bruce ignored Alfred's uncharacteristic lapse and hurled the cowl across the room; it landed on a couch, blank sockets gazing reproachfully at him. "_How_ could he get so close and muck it up so totally? I thought--for a moment there, I really thought--" His voice broke off and he busied himself with prying himself out of the armor.

Alfred picked up the pieces, trying to re-gather his aplomb and figure out where things had gone so horribly wrong.

"Of all the stupid--the stupid--" Bruce's hands slipped on a buckle and he cursed, ripping at the cloth as if struggling with an enemy. "He's supposed to be _smart_, and instead he was just talking _nonsense_, he understands _nothing_\--" His voice was shaking as the chestpiece finally came off and thumped to the floor.

"And you want him to understand," Alfred said slowly.

Bruce gave him an eloquent glare as he shrugged into a bathrobe.

"Then for God's sake, sir, _tell him_," Alfred pleaded. "I believe you can trust him."

"Of _course_ I can trust him," Bruce snarled as if Alfred had insulted him. "He might disapprove, but he'd never betray my trust."

"Then--"

"--It's too dangerous," Bruce said flatly. "Being connected to me, to Batman--it almost cost Gordon his family. It cost Rachel and Harvey _everything_. I won't risk his life. It's--" He faltered, staring down at the armor on the floor. "Alfred, he's too important to risk."

Alfred bent down and picked up the last pieces of leather and nomex, the war between chagrin and hope in his heart never making it to his face. "What will you do now, sir?"

"Maybe he'll just go back to Metropolis and drop it," Bruce said. He looked at Alfred's face. "But that's pretty unlikely, isn't it?"

"Exceedingly so." Alfred pulled a small blue notebook from his pocket. "Especially since I found this in your car when I was cleaning it this morning. Sloppy of you to forget it, sir," he said, handing it over. "One would almost suspect you wanted to give him a reason to come back."

Bruce flipped open the notebook, glancing at the jotted notes. "Take it up with my damn subconscious," he muttered. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it in sweaty disarray. "I'm going to clean up. If he shows up while I'm in the shower, tell him to wait for me."

"What are you going to say to him?"

"What I usually do," Bruce said as he stood up and stretched, his neck popping. "I'll tell just enough of the truth to create an even more convincing lie, and he'll finally go away and leave me alone."

He nodded to himself and padded off to the bathroom, apparently convinced that he had sounded resolute rather than desolate.

**: : :**

Clark Kent adjusted his tie and waited in the lobby of the penthouse. The intercom buzzed and Alfred Pennyworth's filtered voice said "Master Wayne is expecting you, Mr. Kent. Please do come up."

The elevator doors opened and Clark stepped in and rose far above Gotham to Bruce Wayne's private penthouse.

"Clark," said Bruce as he stepped out. "What a pleasure to see you again." His hair was still damp, falling slightly into his eyes, and he was carrying a martini glass and wearing slacks and a silk shirt, the image of a hedonist at home. "I suppose you came for your notebook? Sorry about that."

Clark looked around the penthouse, which was airy, open, and almost totally devoid of decoration of any sort. Everything was austere steel and glass, with accents of black and white. There was almost no trace of personality in the place.

Then Bruce pressed a button on the wall and the shutters on the huge plate-glass windows slid open, and Clark realized why there was no sense of Bruce in the penthouse.

Gotham unfolded all around the apartment, every window an exquisite view of the city. Gotham itself was the penthouse's only decoration, its jewel and its completion.

"Can I get you a drink?" Bruce said, waving his glass. "It's five o'clock somewhere in the world, I always say."

"There isn't any alcohol in that drink," Clark said.

Bruce took a sip and smirked at him. "Well, we can chat over Shirley Temples then," he said. He strolled to the bar and poured ginger ale, added a splash of grenadine, and topped it with a cherry. "Cheers," he said, handing it to Clark.

"We need to talk," said Clark as he took the glass. "I need to tell you--"

"I know," said Bruce. The smile slipped from his face and he looked very serious. "I've...been thinking about last night. And not just the kissing," he added with a flash of a grin. "No, I've been thinking about what you said." He put down the drink and went to the window, gazing out at the city. "About how I'd be throwing my life away if I went after Batman. Maybe you're right. Maybe it would be a waste to fight him. You've given me a lot to think about and--"

Clark cut off his words by putting a finger to Bruce's lips. "Stop it," he said. "That's not what I came here for. And you're not the kind of man who gives up on something so easily."

There was a flash of anger in Bruce's eyes. "I don't think you understand me as well as you think you do," he said, but he kissed Clark's finger.

"This is not some casual plan you've thrown together," Clark said. "You've been working on it since Batman first showed up. You have a butler who trained in the British Secret Service. He's been helping you with the logistics, the tactics, the medical care."

"He also does windows," Bruce said against Clark's finger. "He's a regular Swiss Army knife of a butler. Priceless."

"You crash your cars regularly--but only the ones that aren't unique, that you can replace. This isn't a lark for you, this is a serious plan, and you're not going to give it up just because some random guy--" Bruce slipped his finger into his mouth and Clark lost his train of thought for a second. "Um, just because some random guy made out with you for a while."

Bruce bit his finger lightly, smiling around it. "You are most definitely not some random guy," he mumbled.

"You're right," said Clark, "But not the way you think. Bruce..."

Bruce was busy sucking on his finger; Clark reclaimed it and Bruce pulled his mouth into a pout. "Clark, I mean it. I have no intention of fighting Batman. As for the other things we did last night..." He smiled, but there was a tightness around his eyes that made him look more worried than alluring. "If you like, we can have a fun romp until your story is done. But seriously, Clark, you know perfectly well there's nothing possible in the long run. Let's just have a little fun together," he said, nuzzling Clark's ear. "I'm not...a long-run sort of guy."

"I think you are," said Clark. "And I think we can do great things together. Bruce, there's something I have to show you." He started to loosen his tie. "This is...really hard," he said. His hands were shaking.

Bruce's eyes widened into a leer. "Well, I was kind of hoping to see it, I confess, and I'd like to think it was really hard already, but I didn't think you'd be so quick to...show...me..."

His voice trailed off as Clark unbuttoned his shirt to reveal the red and blue cloth, the golden insignia.

After a long moment, he raised his eyes from Clark's chest. "Clark, where in the world did you get a Superman costume and why are you wearing it under your clothes?"

Clark pulled off his glasses and ruffled his bangs until they fell into place.

Bruce stared. "Okay, you do a very good Superman cosplay," he said, baffled. "What does this have to do with anything? Are you planning to help me raise money for Gotham by pretending to be--"

_"Bruce."_ Clark put his arms around him and lifted them both into the air, floating toward the ceiling. "This is me. I'm--"

He broke off at the sight of Bruce's face, which had gone absolutely white and rigid. _"Jesus,_" Bruce gasped.

"No, just Superman." Clark chuckled, but Bruce didn't even seem to hear the joke. He was staring at Clark, his face blank, his breath rapid and shallow. Clark dropped them down to the floor again. "Bruce?"

"No," Bruce said. He took a step back, away from Clark. "I can't--" He lapsed into silence with the sentence unfinished, staring at Clark as if his mind were racing uncontrollably.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," Clark said, buttoning his shirt, suddenly feeling awkward and unsure in the face of Bruce's reaction. "There...never seemed to be a good time, I guess. I should have told you sooner."

"No," said Bruce again. "I...I understand." He shook his head blankly. "Show me again."

Clark lifted himself a few feet off the floor and watched Bruce's eyes widen. "Hold on," said Clark, "Let me..." He picked up the couch and hoisted it over his head, still floating.

Bruce made a choking sound, his eyes glassy. "You're Superman," he said.

"Yes," Clark said, putting down the couch. "And don't you see, Bruce, that means I can _help_ you. I'm not just a reporter. We can get so much done together--"

"--You have to go," Bruce said. His voice was totally affectless beyond a glint of panic. "I can't deal with this right now." He looked away from Clark for the first time to stare around the room wildly, then lunged to whack a button on the wall. "Alfred!" he called. "Alfred? Could you show Mr. Kent out, please? Now?"

"Damn it, Bruce," Clark gritted, "Don't you _dare_ shut me out. Let me _help_. Just tell me--" Bruce's face was still expressionless, his head shaking slowly as if in negation. "Look, I'll make it easy for you. I'll put it in words you're used to saying. If you want me to help you, just say--" Clark dropped his voice and snarled, "_"I don't need help. I don't need anyone's stinking help.'_ That way you don't have to stretch yourself. Okay?" Bruce was staring at his chest as though the S-symbol were glowing through the cloth. "Bruce?"

"You can't," Bruce said. "You can't just tell me that and expect me to process it and be fine. It...this changes everything. I can't--" He looked up and met Clark's eyes, but his gaze was turned inward, unseeing. "Give me twenty-four hours. I have to think." Clark started to say something, but Bruce shook his head violently. "_Twenty-four hours,_ Clark. Don't--don't push me."

Clark had imagined a variety of reactions from Bruce, ranging from anger to exaltation, but this total blank bewilderment had never been an option. "Okay," he said gently to Bruce's white face and stunned eyes. "I have to be on Jack Ryder's show in a few hours anyway. I'll give you some space. But I'll be back tomorrow night. And Bruce--" Bruce blinked at him as if at a stranger, "I always thought that maybe I--maybe Superman--could work with Batman to keep both our cities safer. But now I know I couldn't ask for a better ally than you." He leaned forward and kissed Bruce very lightly; Bruce hardly seemed to notice. "We're not alone, Bruce," he said.

He left Bruce Wayne standing in the middle of his penthouse, staring after him.

**: : :**

Babs Gordon was walking home from school with her brother, hand in hand with Mr. McLarty. Mr. McLarty was one of the men Daddy had stay with them all the time now, ever since that awful night with the awful scarred man. Mr. McLarty kept Babs and Jimmy safe--he said he kept them safe from the Batman, and Babs wanted to tell him he was wrong, but Daddy said that it was a secret that Batman was a good guy, so Babs didn't tell him.

Babs was good at keeping secrets.

They were about halfway home when a car suddenly pulled up next to them. Mr. McLarty pushed Babs and Jimmy behind him, but then he relaxed. "Dr. Quinzel," he said. "What's going on?"

The woman in the driver's seat of the car was wearing a white doctor's coat. She had blond hair and wide blue eyes that looked scared and worried. "Mike," she said. "It's the Joker. He's--he's broken out of Arkham." She put a hand over her mouth suddenly, as if she was really frightened. At the motion, Babs caught a glimpse of red and black clothing beneath the white coat. "Based on his last interviews, we think he might be going after the kids."

Babs shrank back behind Mr. McLarty. Dr. Quinzel smiled at her reassuringly, but there was something tense and wrong around her eyes and Babs didn't feel any better. Jimmy reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it, and Babs squeezed back.

"Let me call the Commish and see where we should go," said McLarty.

"Get in the car and call from there, it's safer if we're moving," said Dr. Quinzel.

Mr. McLarty opened up the back door and scooted Jimmy and Babs in, then went around to the front door. He opened the door and was pulling out his cell phone when there was a sudden noise, deafening in the confines of the car. Mr. McLarty fell backwards and Babs screamed as the car jumped forward without him. The door swung wildly as the car careened off; Babs saw red splashed along the window and her scream spiraled upward as she remembered the sound from her nightmares, the sound of a gunshot. Beside her, Jimmy's face was fixed and white, his eyes wide. He grabbed Babs and they clung together as the car swerved and jolted down the street, jostling them.

"This is it, kids." It took Babs a moment to recognize Dr. Quinzel's voice, filled with triumph and trepidation. "No going back now, no way! It's do or die time for Harley Quinn!"

As the children cowered in the back seat, Dr. Quinzel started to laugh and didn't stop.


	10. Chapter 10

"I'm Jack Ryder, and _you_ are _wrong_." Jack Ryder turned from the camera, tapped his index cards on the desk, and fixed a gimlet stare on Clark Kent. "And we're here today with Mr. Clark Kent, reporter from the Metropolis _Daily Planet_. You're writing an expose of the Batman, are you not?"

"Well, Mr. Ryder, I've come to understand there are a lot of things in Gotham more interesting than Batman."

"More interesting than Batman?" Ryder barked a disbelieving laugh. "Mr. Kent, don't fall for the PR bull that Mayor Garcia tries to shove down our throats. This is a city at _war_ with a murderous masked menace, and--"

He broke off and put a hand to his earpiece, listening. "What? Where? Well, what are you waiting for? Get a feed!" He turned back to the camera, his eyes shining with morbid glee. "Breaking news, folks. We've got a hostage situation on the New Trigate Bridge. The police are at the scene, but the kidnapper is demanding we broadcast her demands on _this very show_\--" he tapped his index cards on the desk for emphasis, "--the only show that gives you the inside story!"

"Should you really be showing this?" Clark cut in. "I mean, a hostage situation, it's volatile, and it's giving the kidnapper what they want--"

"--Hey, maybe you've got the luxury of sober reflection, Mr. Print Media." Ryder pointed the index cards at him. "But here in Gotham we don't shy away from showing the truth in all its messy reality!" He tilted his head, addressed the cameras once more: "Okay, my engineers are telling me we've got a feed established. This is live, ladies and gentlemen, live and breaking news right here on _Gotham Insider_!"

The monitors flickered to life and the crowd gasped at the face that filled the screen: smeared hastily with streaky chalk-white makeup, the eyes ringed with black greasepaint and the lips a scarlet ruin. Clark recognized the face beneath the grotesque paint: Harleen Quinzel.

"Hel-looo Gotham," Quinzel sang out into the camera. "This is Harley Quinn, coming to you live and kicking from the New Trigate Bridge, where I'm conducting a little psychological theory-testing." She held up a thin steel cable, her white-gloved fist clenched around one end. "Now, I don't want any outside--one might say alien--factors interfering with this test, so I have to mention that I'm holding a dead-man's switch that triggers a few carefully-placed bombs. If that flying straight man from Metropolis interferes, I let go and--" She grinned, "--KABLOOIE! The Joker's work is completed. Oh, and the same goes for anyone setting foot on this bridge who isn't Batman," she said. "This is between the Bat and me, _mano a womano._"

Still smiling, she backed away from the camera to reveal two children, tied back-to-back and dangling by a rope from a girder. She pushed them and they revolved slowly, revealing two tear-streaked faces: Jim Gordon's children.

The studio audience groaned aloud, an involuntary ripple of anguish, but Clark tore his eyes from the children's faces to scan what the camera was revealing of the area. At Quinzel's feet was a large duffel bag with "Bag of Tricks" scrawled on it in magic marker. Behind her was a car with a yellow smiley-face spray-painted on the hood.

"Get me a helicopter shot," Ryder said, and a new video appeared on the monitor, an unsteady image from above the bridge, circling in the falling dusk. The upper level of the bridge was empty except for Quinzel, dressed in a bizarre red and black outfit, standing near the children dangling over the edge. On the lower level people were pouring out of a train stopped on the tracks, gathering at the edge and trying to peer upward. There were police officers as well, and Clark could see Jim Gordon among them, gesturing and barking orders.

"You see," Quinzel was explaining earnestly as the feed cut back to her, "I spent a lot of time analyzing the Joker, and I realized he's discovered a basic psychological truth: _everyone has to choose._ And it's the choosing that reveals who we really are. I don't mean the stupid mundane choices like what to wear." She did a quick pirouette. "Although I do think red and black suit me, of course. I mean the real choices. The ones that matter. It's a dog eat dog world, my little puppies. _There are no exceptions._" For a second her eyes beneath the black paint gleamed with fanatic zeal, the scientific facade stripped away. "There can't be. And _he_ knows humanity is just a polite lie we tell."

"You're wrong," said a voice from the shadows, low and grating. A rustle, and a cloaked shape dropped from the girders into camera range.

"Batman!" cried Jim Gordon's son, his face lighting up in desperate hope. "Batman!" The little girl didn't speak, her teeth fastened in her lower lip as though to bite back her own cry.

But her eyes said more than her brother's voice.

Beside Clark, Ryder muttered, "Huh. Talk about Stockholm Syndrome. Sad, really."

Quinzel arched paint-smeared eyebrows coyly. "Why, _Batman_," she cooed in breathy mimicry, "Who could _possibly_ have predicted that you'd show up to save Gordon's kiddies? And after you supposedly kidnapped them and threatened to kill them and all." The children's imploring eyes never left Batman's face. "One might almost think that was a _lie_." She pushed the swinging children hard on the last word and they swung further out over the river, their thin shrieks echoing through the studio.

Batman started forward, but Harley held up the dead man's switch. "Uh uh uh," she said warningly, "We must respect the scientific process, or I'm afraid a lot of so-called 'innocent' Gothamites will die. And _you_ don't want that, do you?" She smiled at Batman, sweetly. "You're all alone, Batman. And you just volunteered to be test subject number one! It will be his crowning achievement, the capstone of his philosophy. And _I'll_ be the one to prove it!"

Batman stood completely still for a long moment. Then his gaze went from Quinzel to the camera beyond her, looking out.

"I don't need help," he gritted, articulating each word. "I don't need..._anyone's stinking help._"

"Sit down," hissed Ryder, and Clark realized he was on his feet, staring at the dark figure on the screen. In an instant the world re-aligned, everything was clear, and there was no time to curse his own stupidity because Batman--_Bruce_\--was speaking again.

"Give it up, Quinzel," he said. "I could beat you with nothing more than a Swiss Army knife. You'll make a mistake. One _little trip_ is all it takes."

"Mr. Ryder, I protest airing this travesty," blurted Clark. "And I won't be a party to it a moment longer."

"The door's over there, you wuss," barked Ryder. "Get the hell out of my studio."

Clark bolted for the door before his sentence was done, his heart pounding. _Bruce. My God, Bruce._

Moments later, Superman was in the air and soaring toward Bruce Wayne's penthouse.

**: : :**

Alfred Pennyworth inhaled sharply at Batman's words. _One little trip._ But how in the world--

"Never expected Batman to be so chatty," Quinzel sneered on the screen. "I mean really? Trash talk? _Bo_-ring."

There was a sudden _thump_ against the plate-glass windows, and Alfred turned, startled, to see Superman banging urgently on the glass. He was drawing back his fist as though to shatter the glass, his face a mask of fury and fear, when Alfred threw open the patio door and hurried out.

"Swiss Army knife," Superman said as if it were an explanation. "What did he mean, a 'little trip?'"

"They're the names of the captains of the ferries on that night," Alfred said. "James Little and Peter Trippe. He's trying to tell us that she's put bombs on the ferries. 'The Joker's work completed,' she said."

"Got it," said Superman, all his muscles coiling for action.

"Mr. Kent--Superman, wait," Alfred said, putting out his hand.

_"He needs me,_" Superman cried, anguish in his eyes.

"Search the hospital and police department too. It would fit the theme of finishing the Joker's work." Superman nodded and lifted upward. "--And the bridges and tunnels," Alfred added hastily. "Joker threatened to bomb them too. She might have--"

"--There must be a _dozen_ bridges and tunnels!" Superman's gaze was locked on the television screen, on the dark shadow holding its ground alone.

"Seventeen, actually. Check them."

"Anything _else_?"

"Well, there was a warehouse down by the docks--but he just burned some money there, it wasn't anything personal for him. And there was the fund-raiser here."

Superman glanced around, his eyes narrowed. "There are no bombs here."

"Well, that's something," Alfred said. "You have to check them all. He's trusting you with his city. Trust him to handle Quinzel."

Superman hesitated just an instant, then nodded.

"And Superman--" The figure paused one more time, hands clenched. "--Do hurry, please."

The faintest shadow of a smile tugged at Superman's lips, and then he was gone.

On the screen, Quinzel shrugged. "Enough of the research questions. Let's get to the data-collection part of the experiment."

Then things began to happen very quickly.

Quinzel knelt and in a swift motion grabbed an axe from the bag at her feet.

Batman jumped forward and seized the hand that held the dead man's switch, holding the switch down.

With a crow of triumph, Quinzel pivoted to bring the axe down on the rope holding the children suspended.

Still clutching Quinzel's hand with the switch, Batman leaped to grab at the rope holding the Gordon children with his other hand. He caught it and held on as they fell, balanced on the guardrail at the edge of the bridge.

Pulling her hand out of her glove, Quinzel kicked him hard, sending Batman, the children, and the dead man's switch over the edge of the bridge.

_"No!"_ Alfred's cry rang out in the empty penthouse, unheard. But he heard shrieks of horror from the lower level of the bridge, and over them he heard a sharp _twang_ as the cable connected to the dead man's switch was stretched taut.

The feed cut back to the helicopter camera to reveal a terrifying _tableau_. Batman was suspended over the river, his arms stretched out to their full length, tense with agony. The children dangled below him. The people on the second level of the bridge were crying out, reaching futilely toward the children swaying out of reach, or hiding their eyes in horror.

Quinzel calmly adjusted her camera on the edge of the bridge so it could take in the scene below it. Then she pulled a gun out of her bag and perched on the edge of the bridge, crossing her legs almost primly. "It seems everything is in place," she explained to the slowly rotating Batman as the feed cut back to her. "And we're ready to begin the experiment. Choice. Everything comes down to choice. Which will you let go? The children or the city, Batman?"

"Oh God," whispered Alfred to the empty penthouse. "Please hurry, Clark."

**: : :**

The river wheeled far below Batman, dotted with ice floes. The skyline of Gotham turned around him, lights starting to come on in the dusk. Below, Jim Gordon's children looked up at him, their faces pale ovals in the darkness. On the lower level of the bridge, Batman could see people gathered, watching helplessly.

None of it mattered. All that mattered were the rope in one hand, the dead man's switch in the other. In one hand, the life of two children. In the other, the lives of countless Gotham citizens.

Bruce Wayne gritted his teeth and held on through the fiery agony in his shoulders.

"You have to let go of something," Quinzel said above him, her voice kind and detached, a psychologist's voice. "You have to choose. Choose or be torn apart." She dangled her feet over the edge, peering down at him. "Just let something go, Batman. It's easy. Trust me, I know." Her laugh was a delighted trill of madness.

Were his fingers slipping? They were numb. He locked them more tightly. They hadn't slipped yet, he knew because he wasn't falling. Cautiously, carefully, Batman began to swing the children like a pendulum, the tiniest arc.

"Don't move," he heard Barbara say to her brother. "Hold still," and he bit back a fierce grin. _Smart girl_.

The muscles of his right arm shrieked in protest at even the slight movement, but if he could get momentum going... Below him on the bridge people were scrambling, yelling for ropes, for something to reach the children.

"Hold your horses there," snapped Quinzel. "No extraneous variables. This is _my_ experiment." A scrabbling noise as she climbed down from the edge of the bridge, then the sound of a car engine starting. The dead man's switch was tied to the car, Batman realized, bracing himself. The cable connected to the switch jerked upward about a meter, yanking the children further from safety and shooting jolts of pain down Batman's arm.

A car door slammed and Quinzel's white-smeared face appeared over the edge again, much closer now. The black around her eyes was smudged like mascara after weeping, but her smile was brilliant. "Still holding on? I'm impressed. But it can't last. Something has to give, Batman. You could save the city if you let the children fall. Or you could probably save the children if you let go of that switch. You're resourceful, I'm sure you'd think of something. But you can't save them all."

Batman locked his hands more tightly and glared up at her.

She kept smiling, but a sharp line appeared between her brows. "You have to choose," she said with emphasis. "You have to. You're just delaying the inevitable. Can't you see how simple it is?" Silence except for the wind in the girders, the roar of the river, the distant sobs. Quinzel banged the bridge with her fist. "Okay then, I'll make it easier for you."

She disappeared for a second, then reappeared, hoisting her bag with some effort. Reaching in, she pulled out a rubber chicken, when she threw at him. It bounced off his face and dwindled to the river below. A whoopie cushion, a chattering pair of fake teeth, and a banana peel followed. "Ah, there we go," she said with relish, pulling out a bowling ball. She raised it above her head. "Bombs away!"

Just before she released it, Batman realized she wasn't aiming at him.

She was aiming at the Gordon children.

He swiveled his body to intercept it, hearing the solid _crack_ as it hit his hip, dull pain radiating from the impact. He heard a scream from below him, but the rope didn't jerk, so he had managed to deflect it.

"Sheez, drop the nobility schtick," said Quinzel. "You're gonna make me barf." She rummaged in the bag some more and came up with a spray can. Bruce recognized the label and closed his eyes, clamping his mouth shut as raw, harsh fluid hit his face. Pepper spray: even closed, his eyes watered and burned, and the skin of his face felt flayed. He ignored the sensation, the searing in his nose and lungs, and focused on his hands, on each finger, on keeping them in place. The children. The bombs. Gotham. Jim. Clark's hands. Superman's hands. Batman's hands--_his_ hands--were on the rope, on the switch. Still there.

"I don't think you're getting the punchline here." Quinzel's voice was too high, strained and anxious. "See, it's _funny_ that you try to do it all, but you can't. You can't!" Bruce blinked hard, trying to clear his streaming eyes, and saw her rearing above him with a baseball bat.

It connected with his head, a dull reverberating _thud_. The cowl absorbed some of the impact, but the world went gray and distant for a moment, the lights of Gotham swimming around him. He held on. The impact from the bat made him start to swing, and he leaned into the momentum, trying once more to move the children into an arc. "Let go, damn you!" Quinzel's voice was rapidly leaving any sort of sanity behind, crackling into madness. "You _have_ to _choose_!" she cried, punctuating her words with blows from the bat raining on his head and shoulders. "I mean, how _stupid _are you? You _can't_ hold _on_ for_ever_!"

But he didn't need to hold on forever, he thought. Clark was out there. Clark and Alfred had heard him. So he didn't need to hold on forever. He just needed to last

a little

longer.

The pain was an abstract thing, nowhere near as real as the angle of the arc described by the bound children, the gap between them and the lower level of the bridge, the slack remaining in the rope. Calculations. Blood in his mouth. He let the children slip a few more inches. Angles. Velocity. Almost there.

With a final push that tore a grunt of effort from his lungs, he swung the children toward the lower level of the bridge.

The children seemed frozen above the river, unmoving in the air forever. Bruce had a glimpse of Barbara's face, looking up at him.

Then Jim Gordon had his son's foot in his hand, just the foot, the barest connection. He was trying to pull the kids in, teetering on the edge, and Batman let the rope slide a few more precious inches through his glove, a little more slack, just a little more.

Above him, a shriek of pure rage. "To hell with it!" Quinzel's voice was choked with tears of fury. "It doesn't matter! I have a back-up plan! You've tampered with my data, so we're just going to have to throw the results out. _But--_" She pulled out a box with a comically large red button, "--At least I'm gonna enjoy my Gotham-shattering KABOOM!"

She pressed the button, her face alight with an almost childish anticipation.

Silence. Just the wind through the girders.

"No," Quinzel keened, hitting the button again and again. "No! I checked the batteries, I tested it, it has to work! It's not fair, it's not right, now _he'll never realize how much I understand him!_" She hurled the detonator at Batman and whirled away. _"Fine,_" he heard her yell.

The car started up again and Batman heard the engine rev wildly. A squeal of tires, and the cable suddenly went slack. A crashing crunch, steel against concrete, and debris rained down around him, battering his body as people cried out. Batman dropped about a meter and saw Jim Gordon's face frozen in horror, an empty shoe in his hand; the kids falling lower, sweeping in an arc back out over the river.

Another quick calculation: Batman pulled his arm in, joints screaming anguish, and swung the children back up onto the bridge. The rope was cut, they were in Jim Gordon's arms. Faces were peering and pointing at him, metal was shrieking above him as Quinzel battered the guardrail, but it didn't matter.

The children were safe.

He still held the dead man's switch down.

The cable jerked upwards a few feet, shaking Batman like a marionette. A new crash, a metallic, grating shriek: looking up, Batman saw the undercarriage sail overhead as the car hurtled off the bridge. Saw the thin metal strand still connecting him to the car.

He still held the dead man's switch down.

For a brief moment, he was flying.

It was the death he would have chosen, he had time to think in that silent moment, with Gotham in his gaze, shining and safe. It was a good death.

The battered and abused steel of the car gave way in a rain of metal and debris. There was another agonizing wrench, Batman felt muscles in his arm tear and rip, and he was falling again. Gotham whirled around him, beautiful and pitiless, watching him fall.

A fresh jolt of agony and he was dangling once more, much lower. He blinked up at his right hand, distantly surprised to find he had never let go of the rope. He was dangling beneath the lower level now, the river still tossing far below. The cable in his left hand was still attached to an axle, swinging wildly between him and the water.

The car with Quinzel was gone, swallowed up by the river.

People were shouting above him. The children were safe. He was still holding the dead man's switch, connected to part of a car. Holding the switch down. Obviously the rope had gotten wedged into something. He would have chuckled if his throat could have managed it, because now the choice was an easy one. He locked his hand more tightly around the dead man's switch, willing it to stay closed through the inevitable fall, the impact with the water.

He knew eventually he would have to release the rope, but he found himself unwilling to let go just yet. Not just yet.

And then he was being hauled upward, slowly. He looked up to see people reaching down, grabbing the rope, trying to pull. He inched upward, slowly, until he was almost at the edge. Jim Gordon was there, holding the rope, other officers behind him, pulling. Batman's feet scraped the bridge and he tried to get purchase, to shift the weight to his feet and push himself up.

A burly man in a baseball cap was reaching down to him. "Give me your hand!" he shouted. "Let go of the car, man! Give me your hand!"

People were shouting, a confused multitude of voices. Angry voices, screaming at him. "Drop it!" they were yelling. "Batman, drop it! Give him your hand! Let go and we'll pull you up! Let go!" He looked down at the dead man's switch in his left hand, the mass of metal hanging from it. "Let go!"

He glared at them through the swirls of random light obscuring his vision. He couldn't let go. Quinzel might have been bluffing, or wrong. He couldn't be _sure._ It was still the same choice. He clutched the switch tighter with unfeeling fingers.

"He won't let go." Gordon's voice above him, rougher than usual. "He can't." Bruce closed his eyes. Of course Jim would understand. He always had. "Damn his stubborn soul," Gordon rasped. "Keep pulling." A woman was weeping somewhere, a strange high sound. Weeping for whom?

There was a gasp from the crowd. He forced open his burned and watering eyes to see a smudge of red and blue in front of him. He tried to focus, straining to see it better.

"Batman," said Superman. Clark was hovering in the air in front of him. "Batman. It's safe. You can let go."

Bruce blinked at him, then slowly began to open his fingers. They unbent slowly, cramped and locked in place, each joint screaming protest.

The dead man's switch and the remains of the car fell silently to the river below, vanishing into the waves. Batman reached up, and the crowd lifted him over the railing to safety.

"Thank you for saving my children," Jim Gordon said, leaning close, helping him sit up.

"I told you you'd never have to say that," Batman answered. Or he intended to, but his voice was a shattered rasp, broken as if he'd been screaming for an hour. "...told...never...say," was all that came out, but Jim Gordon smiled as if he understood.

Then he straightened, looking around at the crowd. "We need to clear the bridge before it gets too dark," he announced to his officers, his voice brisk. "Clear the bridge and check for any more bombs." He looked out at the Gotham skyline and spoke as if musing to himself: "Getting dark. This will probably take about half an hour."

He bent and embraced his children, who hugged him back. Then Barbara Gordon tore herself from her father's side and threw her arms around Batman. The embrace sent agony slicing through his body again, and he bit back a groan. "Gently," said Jim Gordon's voice. "Treat him gently."

She kissed his cowl and backed away. Jimmy Gordon followed her, touching him on the shoulder before taking his father's hand once more.

There were people crowding around him silently, touching him tentatively, as if to be sure he was real. That what they had witnessed--what they had _done_\--was real.

Jim Gordon broke the silence. "Okay," he said. His voice was soft, but it carried. "Show's over. Everyone get home."

People began to stumble off the bridge, some of them with their arms around each other, some looking back over their shoulders. Together they walked away from Batman and back into Gotham, leaving him alone.

Not quite alone. "Help me," he whispered to the figure beside him. "Help me stand."

Superman helped him to his feet. He hissed with pain as he moved upright, but he stood on his own, watching over the citizens of Gotham as they faded into the gloom.

Superman was standing very close to him, not looking at him. "Not exactly how I meant to tell you," Bruce murmured.

A chuckle, soft in the darkness. "Not much about this has gone as we planned."

"You sound different." The voice was still Clark's, but lower, stronger.

"So do you."

"Too many secrets." He didn't really know the man standing next to him. The thought was surprisingly painful; he swallowed blood and tried to stay standing straight.

"You really think so?" Superman said, his voice curious. He seemed to know what Bruce had meant. "I think we know each other better than we thought we did."

Bruce tried to think of an answer, but his head was starting to ring oddly. He coughed, then wished he hadn't as pain shot through his chest. He tried to take a step forward and his knees buckled, pitching him downward through a red haze.

And then he was in Superman's arms, in Clark's arms, lifted into a sky full of stars that fell away into darkness.

** : : :**

Motion. Voices. Light. Pain. More pain.

Darkness again.

**: : :**

Hands trying to remove his cowl. He cried out in protest, a hoarse raven's croak, and struggled against them.

"Master Wayne. It's all right, you're safe."

He stopped struggling, let the hands peel back the leather. He heard a long, shuddering sigh, then Clark's voice: "Bruce." A pinpoint of vanity touched him: he must look a mess, all bloody burns and bruises. Hands touched his face, impossibly gentle, cool against blistered skin, the only thing that didn't hurt at the moment. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I took so long."

Clark's voice was filled with grief, but his words were meaningless, they made no sense. "Thank you," Bruce managed with his torn voice. Full sentences seemed beyond him. "My city."

"Your city," Clark agreed.

"We have to get the suit off him," Alfred said.

"It will hurt him," Clark said sharply.

"He can take it," Alfred said. Sorrow, pride, and exasperation warred in his voice.

Bruce made a grunt of assent, and Clark's hand touched his mouth for a moment, tenderly.

"See, I was right all along," Clark said. "You're crazy, and self-destructive, and I think I love you."

_And what does that make you?_ Bruce wanted to retort, but his voice wasn't up to it, and soon the pain returned, obliterating him, and all he had to hold on to were Clark's three last words.

He held on to them until the world was blotted out again.

**: : :**

There were cool sheets against his body. There was still pain, but it was more distant.

He could hear Clark and Alfred talking nearby. He let their voices wash over him without comprehension, long slow waves of sound. He heard instead the memory of his angry question to Alfred, so long ago:

_"What would you have me do?"_

He sighed, a long exhalation, and the nearby jumble of voices stopped suddenly. A hand rested on his forehead, cool and soothing. Clark's voice. The words didn't matter. He could rest for a moment, he knew that.

He had made his choice, and Gotham had saved him.

He had endured.


	11. Chapter 11

The room buzzed with avid voices. "Is it true that Harley Quinn's body wasn't recovered?" yelled a reporter from the Gotham _Gazette_.

"The car that _Doctor Harleen Quinzel_ drove off the New Trigate Bridge was empty when we recovered it," said Jim Gordon, squinting out at the popping flashbulbs as he stressed the proper name. If you let the press get away with tacking ridiculous codenames on villains they wouldn't be content until every thug in Gotham had some bizarre alias. "It's likely that her body was swept out to sea."

"Is it possible she was an accomplice to the Joker all along? Did she help him kidnap your children before?"

"--And did Batman try to _help_ Dent save your kids last year?" another reporter added.

"We're looking into how long Dr. Quinzel was working with him, but we have no clear answer to that yet. As to what happened six months ago..." Jim paused for a moment to savor his next line. "You may remember I have always insisted that there was no evidence whatsoever connecting Batman to those crimes. It was dark and events unfolded very quickly. I wouldn't feel comfortable saying exactly what happened."

The reporters muttered amongst themselves, clearly dissatisfied, but they were a clever bunch. They'd find a new narrative that fit.

A reporter raised his hand almost shyly, as if afraid to bother him, and Jim found that too charming to pass up. He nodded to him and the man said "Clark Kent, Metropolis _Daily Planet._ I was wondering, sir...are your children all right?"

Jim blinked, then said, "They're doing well, thank you for asking." Kent broke into a smile so radiant that Jim found himself smiling back. "They were badly shaken up, of course, but unhurt."

Another reporter cut in. "Are you thinking of getting them out of Gotham, somewhere safe?"

"Well..." As a matter of fact, Jim's wife had mentioned the possibility last night. Babs, however, had thrown something of a temper tantrum at the very thought. "It's my intention to make Gotham safe for all our children, rather than sending mine away to be safe."

A low murmur of mixed approval and disbelief from the crowd. Jim watched their faces as the press conference ended. There would be as many theories as there were people, now. Some would say Batman was innocent of murder. Some would insist he was a killer and should be prosecuted. Others would agree he was a killer and would applaud him for exactly that.

A few people might even guess that Harvey Dent wasn't the paragon of his mythology. But his image would be untarnished a while longer, a beacon that shone when Gotham needed it most.

However, she had other beacons now.

Commissioner James Gordon walked home through the dusk, his head full of plans. He stopped for a moment on the corner and looked at the lights of his little flat, golden in the twilight. His wife's silhouette moved against the curtains, and he could hear his son laughing.

He stood for a moment in the darkness, looking in at the circle of warmth and safety, at the people who cared for him. He shoved his cold hands in his pockets for a moment, then cast a glance to the night sky.

Then Jim Gordon went home.

**: : :**

"--You didn't ask about Dent."

"I'm sorry?"

John "Tiny" Maguire looked down at the reporter, his broad face impassive as it had been throughout the interview. "I don't like to talk about that night," he said, his voice a low rumble. "'Cause when people find out, they always ask about Dent. Like what I did was because he inspired me. Maybe now people'll ask me if I did it because of Batman."

"And, um, did you?"

Maguire's eyes narrowed. "I wasn't thinking about nobody that night except the people on that other boat--" He tapped his chest once, "--and my own soul. I didn't do it for nobody else's sake. And anybody else would have done the same thing. Because we're Gothamites, and--look, we make mistakes. Sure we do. We get desperate. But we don't go blowing other people up just because some nutjob tells us to." He settled backwards and crossed his arms with finality. "Think you can use that in your story?"

Clark Kent nodded. "Yes, Mr. Maguire, I think I can."

**: : :**

Lucius Fox looked around the conference table at the fidgeting shareholders, keeping his expression placid and calm. Beneath it, however, there was a gnawing anxiety that made him want to drum his fingers on the glossy wood. He had seen Batman disappear into the shadows of the bridge last night, alive. Able to stand. Surely Pennyworth would have gotten in touch with him if things had...

He cut off that train of thought before it could run inevitably to internal bleeding, head injuries, collapsed lungs. "I'm sure Mr. Wayne will be here any minute," he noted to the restive shareholders.

Then the phone on the sideboard rang, and Lucius picked it up with hands that didn't shake at all. "Yes?"

"Lucius? That you?" Bruce Wayne's voice rang out over the speaker phone, and Lucius sat down very quickly.

"Yes, Mr. Wayne," he said, forcing a sardonic edge into his voice to hide a gust of relief. "Did you forget we had a meeting this morning?"

"Lucius, I don't know if I can make it. Traffic downtown is _terrible_. Did you know they closed the bridge?" There was something odd about Wayne's voice that Lucius couldn't quite pin down. Not just the edge of hoarseness to it. Something different.

The shareholders rolled their eyes as Lucius responded, "Didn't you see it on the news last night, Mr. Wayne?"

A rather smug chuckle. "Who has time to watch the news, Lucius?"

"Then I guess you missed Batman saving Gotham from a bomb threat."

"_Batman?_ That menace? Ridiculous. He's responsible for the bridge being shut down? Unbelievable. Gotham would be better off without him."

"With all due respect, sir, I think a lot of people in Gotham would disagree with you this morning. And I must tell you that I am one of them."

In the silence that followed, Lucius heard Bruce Wayne swallow twice. "Well, I guess you're entitled to your opinion, Lucius," he said at last. "But I wouldn't believe everything you see on television."

"I'll keep that in mind." One of the shareholders tapped impatiently on the table, and Lucius cleared his throat. "And...the meeting, Mr. Wayne?"

Another chuckle. "Lucius, after the night I had, I don't think I could even sign my name. I can still hardly see straight," Bruce said with a distinct leer in his voice.

"Quite an eventful evening?" Lucius said dryly.

"You have _no idea_. There was this girl--Lucius, she was crazy, _craaaazy_. And she was hitting on me like you would not _believe_."

He was enjoying himself, Lucius realized. That was the difference in his voice. He sounded playful, in a way he hadn't for a long time. Bruce's gleeful voice continued: "She was doing things to me that I'm pretty sure aren't legal in most states. Whooo-_eee._"

Lucius wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry, so he decided to merely raise an eyebrow. "Mr. Wayne, you are aware that you're on a speaker phone right now?"

"I am? Hey, hi everyone!" Lucius was impressed to see one of the shareholders actually bend over and gently knock his forehead against the table. "You don't mind me borrowing Lucius for a couple more minutes here, right?"

"Oh, go ahead," said one of the wealthier women, her voice dripping sarcasm. "We've got nothing better to do."

"Good point," Bruce said cheerfully. "But after all that," he went on, his voice solemn, "she left me hanging. It broke me up inside, it really did. But Lucius, I looked out at the Gotham skyline and I realized that I really loved my life. That I wouldn't change a thing" A gusty sigh. "You know, you told me a few days ago I needed to take a break. Not work so hard."

Lucius ignored the incredulous glances from around the table. "I recall saying something of the sort."

"I'm thinking I might take your advice, take some time off. The Manor is almost rebuilt, and they'll need me to oversee the final touches. And I think I deserve some...personal time. Lucius--" and now his voice was not playful at all, "--At any rate, last night worked out for the best, because I met someone else. And I have to say, I think he's...special. I think he really understands me."

Lucius's eyebrows rose involuntarily this time. "I'm pleased to hear that."

"Yep. Yep. I think it's safe to say I fell pretty hard last night."

"You seem to do that a lot, Mr. Wayne."

A soft laugh. "I do, don't I? But never as hard as this. Anyway, everyone, Lucius has my complete confidence and all that stuff. Lucius, keep making me money!"

As the call ended, Lucius looked up from the phone to the exasperated faces of the shareholders. "As Mr. Wayne is unavoidably detained this morning, we might as well get started," he suggested.

As he opened the meeting, he remembered the look that passed between Superman and Batman in that moment under the bridge last night. He remembered the wry, gentle laughter in Bruce Wayne's voice.

As he ran the meeting with businesslike precision, it was all he could do to keep from smiling.

**: : :**

"There. You should have called him last night."

"I believe last night I had other priorities, Master Wayne."

Clark Kent peeked in the door of the penthouse bedroom as Alfred Pennyworth hung up the phone. Bruce Wayne was in the bed, both arms heavily bandaged and lying immobilized at his sides. His face was still reddened and blistered, his hair sweaty and sticking up.

He smiled when he saw Clark, a smile that transformed his face from handsome into beautiful, into something Clark had never seen before. "Clark," he said.

"Hello," said Clark, feeling awkward and oddly shy. "I'm glad to see you're awake."

"I've been up for a while," Bruce said. "Though I can't get anything done if Alfred won't let me move my arms." He cast a glare at Alfred. "I have to get into Arkham's mainframe, find out if security's been compromised. And like Gordon said, we have to find out how far back Quinzel and the Joker go. I need to check current and tide information for the mouth of the river." He shifted restlessly and made an aborted movement as if to lift his arms, then winced and stopped. "Plus there are the contractors for the Manor to think of. They want me to pick out tile for the entrance hall," he said to Clark. Then his eyes kindled as though seeing Clark had reminded him, "_And_ I want to know all about Kryptonian tech. Is it true it's crystal-based? Do you have any I can study? I had heard Luthor destroyed your Fortress, it would be such a shame if that were all lost. Oh, and _Kryptonian_! Do you have any glossaries, can you teach me some? Think of the advantages of being the only two people who could speak a language!"

His voice was enthused and energetic, not the frenetic, aimless energy Clark had seen before but a purposeful zeal. He looked...alive. Renewed.

Bruce was searching Clark's face, looking slightly worried. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't presume," he said. "It's just...there's so much to do. So much we can do. I don't mean to--"

"That's okay," Clark said hastily. "I'd love it if someone else could speak Kryptonian. And I have no problems with you studying the crystals I still have. No secrets," he said.

"No secrets," Bruce repeated.

Alfred Pennyworth looked from one man to the other and cleared his throat. "I'll be off to start dinner, then," he said. He looked sternly at Clark. "Do _not_ let him get out of bed or use his arms, no matter how much he sulks."

"I don't _sulk_," stated Bruce. "I express moderated disapproval."

_He sulks_, Alfred mouthed at Clark, and exited with a wink.

"Okay, I might sulk a little," Bruce muttered. "But who _wouldn't_ sulk, with so much that needs to be done and no way to do most of it? I need to ask Lucius to whip up a better voice-recognition program for web pages and email, I'll go crazy if I can't get on the Internet, and Alfred will quit if he has to read me web pages all day."

"You've been bedridden for..." Clark looked at his watch. "Almost twelve hours."

"Thirteen and a half," Bruce sighed. He tilted his bruised face, looking at Clark. "Show me again," he said.

"Show you?"

"I still can hardly believe it." He pointed upward with his chin. "You know."

"Oh." Clark lifted off the floor slightly. "I don't do this often in civilian clothes. It feels strange," he said.

Bruce shook his head. "Right in front of me," he said. "I thought I had such a huge secret."

"You do." Clark drifted toward Bruce until he was hovering a few feet above him. "I'm glad you decided to share it with me."

Bruce looked up at him. "I've been thinking," he said. "And I believe Quinzel was right about one thing: we _are_ defined by the choices we make." He was silent a long time, looking at Clark. "The choices we make," he repeated, softly.

"You said you wanted to learn Kryptonian?" At Bruce's nod, Clark continued: "There's a Kryptonian word, _yrrelossan_. It's not exactly translatable, but it means something like... 'The moment in which you realize that someone is worthy of your complete trust.' It was considered more precious than even love in Kryptonian society, and more rare."

"_Yrrelossan_," Bruce echoed. He closed his eyes as if to commit it to memory. "Yes. That."

Then his nose twitched and his brow wrinkled in consternation. His eyes flew open and he looked imploringly at Clark, who gazed back in alarm.

"My nose," Bruce said.

"Your nose?"

"It itches." Bruce wriggled, scrunching his face up. "Could you--could you scratch it? It's torture, I tell you." Clark reached down and ran his finger up and down Bruce's nose, and Bruce sighed luxuriously. "Thank you."

"You're going to be an unbearable patient, aren't you?"

"Don't be ridiculous," huffed Bruce. "If I can take pepper spray to the face and bat blows to the head, surely I can take a little bed rest. Besides, I'll be up and back on the streets in a day or two." Clark cast him a dubious look. "Okay, maybe a week. But no more."

"Unbearable," said Clark.

Bruce's mouth twitched, but bit his lip and didn't laugh. Then he sighed tragically.

"What is it now, Bruce?"

"My lips," pouted Bruce. "They itch."

Clark rubbed Bruce's mouth with his finger. Bruce took the opportunity to nibble on it, and Clark found his ability to stay steady in the air severely compromised.

"I think your mouth might work better," Bruce suggested.

"Maybe," agreed Clark, and lowered himself inch by inch until his lips were brushing Bruce's.

"I like this," Bruce murmured against them.

Much later, he whispered, "_Yrrelossan_," as if it were an endearment.

**: : :**

Bruce climbed the stairs to Wayne Manor with Clark at his side. Clark's eyes widened as the beige stone loomed up in his vision--Bruce had insisted he stay away until the day it was completed. As they neared the top of the stairs, Bruce started taking them two at a time, bounding with only the slightest hitch in his gait.

The night before, he and Alfred had exchanged sharp words about his readiness to don the suit again. Bruce had appealed to Clark to break the stalemate, but Clark had remained carefully neutral.

He had quickly learned that it was unwise to cross Alfred Pennyworth.

Bruce had scowled and glowered at Alfred's rebuke, but had finally been convinced that at least one more evening of physical therapy would be wise.

Considering Bruce liked to perform "physical therapy" in the nude and with help from Clark, Clark had no complaints at all.

"Ready?"

Clark tore his thoughts away from the memory of Bruce dripping sweat as he hung from a chin-up bar, his bare legs wrapped around Clark's waist, and nodded.

Bruce put the key in the door and turned it, and together they entered Wayne Manor.

They spent the evening exploring every room. Bruce pointed out the wainscoting, the lintels, the balustrades. He inspected every fireplace, opened and closed each window, got down on his hands and knees to look at the parquet floors of the ballroom. Clark nodded and asked questions, but he was more entranced by the absorbed delight on Bruce's face than the house itself.

"And this is my bedroom," said Bruce, opening a heavy wooden door and ushering Clark into a surprisingly small and cozy room. The four-poster bed was covered with a burgundy brocade, and there were two small desks, side by side. "I thought you might like a place to work when you were staying here," Bruce said at Clark's raised eyebrow, looking away.

Clark touched the gleaming wood. "Thank you," he said.

Bruce sat down on the bed. "Come here." He took Clark's hand and pulled him into a long kiss. "Welcome to my home," he murmured, his hands busy on Clark's clothing, deftly unbuttoning and unzipping.

"Welcome home," Clark whispered back, leaning into the kiss.

**: : :**

Clark propped himself up on one elbow and watched Bruce's sleeping face in the darkness, his skin pale against the deep red cloth. The superficial scratches and bruises were healed for the moment, but the scars gleamed silver in the dark. There was a faint smile on Bruce's face: he looked happy, Clark thought.

Outside the window, there was a flicker in the night sky, a light against the clouds. As Clark looked, the light coalesced against the shadows, a bright circle with a dark shape at its center. He watched the reflected glow touch Bruce Wayne's sleeping face, limning his features.

Bruce's eyes came open at Clark's light touch on his cheek. His gaze went to the window, to the call piercing the night.

Clark watched as the happiness in Bruce's face deepened into joy.

"Welcome home," Clark said again.

This time it was true.


End file.
